RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol a.k.a. "Jabba The Schmuck" Makes A Fat Stretch

Savages! (0.00 / 0)

Lords of Lunacy I say!

"No Quarter Given"

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by: Jack's Smirking Revenge @ Sat Feb 27, 2010 at 21:25:34 PM CST

I may be missing some sarcasm here (6.00 / 2)

but I've read a quite a few articles about this and while I admittedly don't understand every aspect I don't think it's quite as simple as Google wanting to make millions of books available for free.  Especially that free part.

The scifi websites don't seem to like it at all.  Scifi writer/Boingboing guy Cory Doctorow and the EFF have filed a legal objection on privacy grounds.

Here are a series of articles discussing the pro and cons from the EFF website -link.  Notice they make a point of mentioning their site search is powered by Yahoo.  Anyhoo, from the fourth article in the series:

The products and services envisioned by the proposed settlement will give Google not only an unprecedented abililty to track our reading habits, but to do so at an unprecedented level of granularity. Because the books will be accessed on Google's servers, Google will not only know what books readers search for and access, but will also know which pages they read, how long they stayed on each page, what book they read before, and which books they access next. This is a level of reader surveillance that no library or bookstore has ever had.

Readers who feel surveilled will be chilled in their freedom of inquiry. As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas observed in 1953, "Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications . . . [f]ear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall . . . [and] inquiry will be discouraged." Or as Author Michael Chabon put it: "If there is no privacy of thought - which includes implicitly the right to read what one wants, without the approval, consent or knowledge of others - then there is no privacy, period."

And it's not just Google that might want records about your reading habits. A core concern EFF has with the proposed settlement is that under it Google need not insist on a warrant before turning over this sensitive reader information to governmental authorities or private third parties. This is hardly a hypothetical risk: between 2001 and 2005, libraries were contacted by law enforcement seeking information on patrons at least 200 times. And in 2006 alone, AOL received almost 1,000 requests each month for information in civil and criminal cases.

This lack of protections for reader privacy stands in sharp contrast to the privacy protections that librarians and bookstores have been fighting for in connection with physical books for decades. Nearly every state has laws protecting the privacy of library patrons. Yet when Google scans books it got from libraries, privacy protections could be left behind at the digital threshold if Google doesn't stand up for them.

From what I understand people will be able to access some content for free but not necessarily from the privacy of their own home. You won't have access to everything and you may have to wait in line for a while depending on how many public terminals are in your area. From the second EFF article here's how you'd be able to access out of print in copyright books:

   * "Preview Uses" (show up to 20% of the book, for free, in response to search queries);
   * "Consumer Purchase" (permanent, full-text, online access on a book-by-book basis for a fee);
   * "Institutional Subscription" ("all-you-can-eat" full-text online access on a blanket basis through an institution); and
   * "Public Access Service" (at least one free public terminal for public libraries).

For orphaned books with no copyright Google would gain the potential for a monopoly, meaning places like the hexagon or Project Gutenberg likely would not longer have free access to those works themselves.

Here's a letter from the National Writers Union, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America urging opposition to the settlement.

-the fundamental problem at the heart of the settlement -- unilaterally giving all digital rights to orphan works to Google --- remains.

As those articles above make clear it is far from certain exactly what the consequences of this settlement will be. Here's a recent article about thousands of authors opting out of the settlement and some object because of the ambiguity:

"My feelings were, in the end, that I doubted I would lose out by opting out, whereas I might do by opting in. Also there was the principle that copyright is important," said novelist Marika Cobbold, author of books including Guppies for Tea and Shooting Butterflies, who opted out. "It would be like handing over my babies to a babysitter I'd never met, [and] I couldn't understand what was in it for me. I love Google, and in principle making information accessible is wonderful, but things are moving so fast, and authors are losing so much control over what we've done, that my fear was who knows, in five to 10 years' time, how this information could be used?"

And it isn't so much that author's will lose out, it's that Google isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart - it stands to make a lot of money:

"I decided to opt out of the Google book settlement on the advice of my agency, David Higham Associates, and on the advice of Gill Spraggs, who had read the small print. Then I was inspired to read the small print too, and I didn't like what I found. Google's preemptive action has 'turned copyright law on its head'. It seems they plan, unilaterally, to take ownership away from the writer, and the ownership doesn't pass to the readers (fat chance!) but to a giant profit-making corporation. A vast entity allegedly intent on 'doing nothing evil' has simply decided this will be so, and then hired a fleet of lawyers to make it happen," said award-winning science fiction author Gwyneth Jones. "The danger to me, and every other writer, is not that our works will be available free online (I offer most of my recent novels free online already. These 'portable document format' novels are the text as I wrote it, and they do my sales no harm at all). The danger of the digital 'publishing' corporations is their unprecedented access to billions of tiny payments, for product that costs them effectively nothing, at their point of entry. This seems to mean they don't have to worry about any form of resistance at all. I don't like the sound of that, not from anybody's point of view."

And finally -

Former children's laureates Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling authors Jeffrey Archer and Louis de Bernières and critical favourites Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson have all opted out of the controversial Google book settlement, court documents have revealed.

If there's anyone who knows when the man is out to fuck people over I think it would be the guy in bold.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. -H. L. Mencken

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by: cometman @ Sat Feb 27, 2010 at 22:43:09 PM CST

Meant to put this part (5.67 / 3)

from the next to last blockquote in bold above.  

It seems they plan, unilaterally, to take ownership away from the writer, and the ownership doesn't pass to the readers (fat chance!) but to a giant profit-making corporation.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. -H. L. Mencken

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by: cometman @ Sat Feb 27, 2010 at 22:48:46 PM CST

[ Parent ]

No worries.... (6.00 / 1)

all we need is for it to be free for a little while.

Then the copies, oh lord the copies!

Oh and there's always the crazy "pirates" with the scanners stuffs.

Ownership means nothing if everyone can get it for free :-)

"No Quarter Given"

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by: Jack's Smirking Revenge @ Sun Feb 28, 2010 at 01:55:47 AM CST

[ Parent ]