Letters to the Editor
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Thanks for nothing
Why must the people who create the work that goes on the library shelves, the art work you see and the music your hear, have to constantly defend the fact that they make their living from these works and want to be paid for them? The copyright laws aren't much, but they're all we have and as a practicing medical illustrator, I'd like to keep them or at least go with a licensing system similar to ASCAP. We have to fight the concept every day that our work should'nt cost more than $25 (I'm not kidding here) so naturally we're thrilled that people want to take away more of our negotiating rights.
It's not free? Not easy to find? The horror! The people that create the art, music and literature are not beside the point. What Google is proposing seems to me a larger version of the old gimmick "I'll put a link to your website from mine if you'll let me use your work for free". Thanks for nothing.
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fair use
I am a novelist who depends on book sales for income. I have to say that when I first heard about this Google thing, I was fearful and annoyed, but now I don't really see it as that much different from the gray area that surrounds used books and library copies. I meet lots of readers who are on library waiting lists, waiting for my book rather than buying themselves a copy. I also autograph a lot of books that I know have been bought from used bookstores. All through the 19th century, one sold book was equivalent to fifteen "readers" because most people couldn't read, and looked forward to having the book read aloud to them. The fact is, exposure to a book can lead to a purchase, but no exposure to the book leads nowhere. Readers and purchasers are simply different. It's nice to have purchasers, but it's essential to have readers. I think Google users should be allowed to see what's in the book, and that Google should pay licensing fees. I don't believe these notions about the impracticability of finding the copyright owners--there are good faith attempts to do that sort of thing all the time, and there are escrow accounts where money can be stashed, etc. The problems can be worked out. I don't see why anyone would get worked up over an issue that is clearly on the way to being worked out.
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Google Print will not dumb down society.
Thomas Garman, yet again I must disagree with you.
Your arguments don't address the issues at hand, and are more suited to an argument about whether the internet or computers in general have a place in academia.
More easily accessible knowledge will not lead to the dumbing down of society. Online card catalogs haven't dumbed down our students, despite the fact that they no longer need to manually thumb through tens of thousands of index cards to find a book.
No one's suggesting that all research should be replaced by algorithmic searches. Scientific journals are not going to be replaced by blog-style listings of people's Google Print searches. Sources will still be checked and context will still be important.
Google Print will be a remarkable tool, but it will not fundamentally change society in any way that the Internet hasn't already.
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Copyright and authors
As an author with a first book coming out in the spring and as someone who has as expansive a view of what the Internet ought to be as probably anyone -- I don't understand the all-or-nothing approach taken by either "side."
Copyright laws were fine the way they were when they were meant to protect and encourage authors. They've been extended, broadened, for the purpose of ensuring revenue streams for corporations and descendants of authors.
On the other hand -- no, I don't trust Google in perpetuity, either. I don't trust that their interests are coincident with mine, or that this is entirely a "win-win" situation.
Seventy-plus years is a ridiculously long time for a copyright to routinely exist, first of all. Twenty-some was fine. Ten is probably fine for almost everything.
There's no reason that some before-and-after date can't be picked -- say, 2000. Anything published after 2000 is opt-in; anything before, opt-out.
At some point, I'll probably get gloomy about all this, and unproductive -- probably when portable electronic book readers are as accepted and ubiquitous as IPods. And I am concerned that (pardon my raised voice here, but most people don't know this) MANY COPYRIGHTED WORKS, ESPECIALLY BESTSELLERS, ARE ALREADY AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD THROUGH THE SAME CHANNELS AS MUSIC.)
The difference is, not many people -- yet -- are reading books on portable devices. It's on the horizon ... might be a few years, might be generational.
I hope there's time to talk it through. I'd like to be earning a living as an author for quite a while ... that will require that I'm good enough to be popular, and that the public is good enough to compensate me reasonably for my efforts ... somehow. ;-)
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A Piece of the Action
I worked for the Authors Guild for several years. During my time there, I came to disagree with the party line on copyright--the copyright term is currently way too long. But Paul Aiken and company are squarely in the right on this issue. I hope and expect that the judge will agree.
Google isn't building this database out of the goodness of its big electronic heart. It's doing it to make money. The books belong to the authors, so they are owed a piece of the action. Not all the action, but a piece.
Were the smart folks at Google willing to negotiate, they could come up with an equitable and reasonable revenue sharing system, just as Apple built the iTunes store, just as the recording industry has established a fee structure that allows artists to earn a royalty when their songs are sampled on newer hip hop recordings. With such a system, the hassle and cost of litigation would go away. In terms of up-front costs, I am also sure that they could arrange a payment system that would be much cheaper than fighting a lawsuit that Google will likely lose. It's sad and ironic that the bullying pig-headed posture of Google has been turned around to make authors look like greedy luddites.