[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

First, Google et al have already found a large number of writers and rights-holders to notify them of the ability to opt out of the settlement.

Google et al notified publishing companies, and many currently-active authors. They did not notify the majority of, or as far as I know, any of the graduates of universities who publish masters & doctoral theses, to let them know their papers might become part of the Googlebooks collection. I don't know if they contacted companies who publish high school yearbooks, either.

They certainly didn't contact authors & publishers of fanzines, only some of which fall into their "periodicals" definition and are therefore exempt from Googlebook consideration.

I don't think Google can claim to have made a good-faith effort to contact the entire class of "rightsholders of books, as defined by Google, currently registered as copyrighted in the U.S."

They made an effort to contact many organizations with a presence online, in the hopes that those rightsholders would hear about the case. I haven't heard that they sent any physical letters to authors.

Fourth, as previously mentioned, other media have made the same digital transition for out-of-print materials without violating copyright law. I see no reason why a somewhat slow adoption of digitization -- especially when the infrastructure is so undeveloped -- allows for decades of copyright infringement.

To be fair, the other conversion methods have had some problems, especially with orphaned works.

There are thousands of movies languishing in storage closets, because the rightsholders to the soundtracks or scripts can't be found to get permission to convert them to digital formats. Film doesn't last forever--those movies may be dust by the time copy protections go away.

I've got a couple-dozen vinyl records, and several dozen cassettes, that don't have any digital versions available. The vinyl might outlast copyrights (if they're not extended again); the cassettes won't.

• People don't want to wait for and/or work on legislation

To be fair, a number of corporations have shown they'll be willing to throw tens of thousands of dollars to fight cutting back on copyright protections, regardless of whether it's in the public interest. I don't think there's anything unethical in seeking a work-around when the status quo is biased in favor of groups with the most money.

FWIW, I haven't decided where I stand on the Google settlement. It's a huge pack of complicated issues, and I want them all dragged out in public before any final decisions get made.