Quote:
Originally Posted by frahse
Quote also: "After the settlement failed, Clancy told me that at Google “there was just this air let out of the balloon.” Despite eventually winning Authors Guild v. Google, and having the courts declare that displaying snippets of copyrighted books was fair use, the company all but shut down its scanning operation."
There was something similar to this when newspapers and magazines started selling digital copies from their archives of articles they had printed before the digital era. The authors claimed that they had not been compensated fairly for future digital sales - because of course that had not existed when the articles first appeared. Current authors sign off the further use of their articles so they had no claim. But all the old authors saw a chance for additional compensation (more compensation as it were) for their old work and sued.
Finally the newspapers/magazines/etc. said they would just not include any authors's work, title or author's name in their index if the author had not signed off for digital copies. Naturally this was not acceptable to the authors either because it essentially erased a great deal of their legacy.
I don't know what happened to that litigation.
Does anyone?
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If memory serves a similar problem occurred when Disney began releasing its classic animated movies on VHS back in the day. Voice actors like Peggy Lee (who voiced Peg in Lady and the Tramp) argued that they should get some of the proceeds from those sales even though home VHS (and now DVD) media hadn't existed back when they signed the contracts. I think she won her case though it might have been overturned (or not) on appeal. I can't recall if it was or not. It was in the news way back in the 1980's.