MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Scan your books and search them on Google

cjcherryh · 07-03-2009, 09:58 AM

Thank you all for your rational response to my views. I'm pretty sure there is no agreement between my publisher and Google. And I'm very glad Google has modified their practice. It was a silly thing they did: I can't believe their legal department told them this was ok.
The e-book market is the Wild West. Actually Fictionwise and Amazon both had copies of my books up before there was an agreement with my publisher. I've personally chased down 'free distributors' (let's at least be courteous to them, since they have desisted at my request) from offering copies for sale or free download---at the rate of about one a week. You may imagine a working writer has very little time to pursue this sort of thing, and real pirates are a constantly moving target, though small. Google is so massive and universal, they actually pose more of a legal threat---ie, in law, if you've acquiesced to a thing (permitted it after knowing about it by failing to do anything about it) you've put yourself in a very poor position to complain about it in the event somebody else does it. So once officially notified, I was pretty well obliged to defend. I'm entering the market myself, with my backlist, and by what I see of pirate quality, I think the best counterattack is the production of better quality non-DRM copies. I have always had faith in the honesty of my readers, and feel if given a real and reasonable alternative to the pirates' bad copies, they'll rather have the real thing. Which is a little off-thread. Let me get back to it by saying I bear Google no ill will, and I think they do not have bad motives. The situation with official notification from the lawyers just put me in a position where I have to take some action or decline to act, the latter of which is not a good legal choice.

07-03-2009, 09:58 AM	#29
cjcherryh Member Posts: 19 Karma: 108 Join Date: May 2009 Device: computer	Thank you all for your rational response to my views. I'm pretty sure there is no agreement between my publisher and Google. And I'm very glad Google has modified their practice. It was a silly thing they did: I can't believe their legal department told them this was ok. The e-book market is the Wild West. Actually Fictionwise and Amazon both had copies of my books up before there was an agreement with my publisher. I've personally chased down 'free distributors' (let's at least be courteous to them, since they have desisted at my request) from offering copies for sale or free download---at the rate of about one a week. You may imagine a working writer has very little time to pursue this sort of thing, and real pirates are a constantly moving target, though small. Google is so massive and universal, they actually pose more of a legal threat---ie, in law, if you've acquiesced to a thing (permitted it after knowing about it by failing to do anything about it) you've put yourself in a very poor position to complain about it in the event somebody else does it. So once officially notified, I was pretty well obliged to defend. I'm entering the market myself, with my backlist, and by what I see of pirate quality, I think the best counterattack is the production of better quality non-DRM copies. I have always had faith in the honesty of my readers, and feel if given a real and reasonable alternative to the pirates' bad copies, they'll rather have the real thing. Which is a little off-thread. Let me get back to it by saying I bear Google no ill will, and I think they do not have bad motives. The situation with official notification from the lawyers just put me in a position where I have to take some action or decline to act, the latter of which is not a good legal choice.