Quote:
Originally Posted by Morrigan
Thank you to everyone who answered my questions... but i still honestly do not get it... I understand your reaoning, but it still makes no sense to me.
A book is nore than and idea... it is the product of someone's labor... I just not see how anyone is entitled to that.
|
Ok, let me see if I can take a slightly different tack.
Most of the rights we enjoy in the United States are held to be Natural Rights -- I.e., they are potentially enjoyed by man in a perfectly free state where our actions are not constrained. Even rights that are specifically legislated by the Government are not generally considered to be the establishment of a right, but rather to be a protection of an existing right (Consider, most of the Bill of Rights restricts Congress or the Government from acting against the right, it does not actually establish it).
Now, property is a concept that is generally held to exist in Natural Law because there is in general a limited amount of it. Two people cannot build different houses in the same exact location at the same exact time. However, prior to the existence of the State, no such restriction existed on ideas. An idea can be shared amongst many people without loosing its value. Therefore, many hold that in Natural Law, ideas are not property. People should be able to borrow them and reuse them as they please.
Now, just because ideas are not natural property, that does not mean they don't have value. Long before copyright, there was value derived from books, inventions and ideas in general. The United States Constitution recognizes that, and gives Congress the power to provide an incentive for the creation of new creative works through the issuance of patents and copyrights. The first amendment essentially restricts how tightly those copyrights can be enforced; you may have come up with an idea, but others might comment on the idea and even, to a limited extent, profit from it (Under fair use restrictions).
Now lets look at this from the perspective of the Google Book Settlement. Currently copyright for authors is life plus 70 years. For the sake of the argument, lets assume that on average, that works out to be 100 years. The vast majority of books however will be in print for less than 10 years (including books by relatively famous people). So on average, books will remain out of print for 90% of the time they are in copyright; during this period, no one will be able to profit from them. This essentially is anathema to the very idea of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to allow an author to profit so they would have an incentive to create and ultimately to allow all of us to potentially profit. Whats worse, over those 90 years, the work can be lost and therefore never have an effective opportunity to reach the public domain.
So, Google essentially wants to do with books what they have already done with the web. store it and catalog it so that others can make use of it for research and pleasure (and so Google can make some money off of it of course). These are works that, outside of Google Books or some similar project, have little commercial value. Indeed, the value is being invented by Google's efforts.
Part of me has to wonder... Right now Google has agreed to set aside funds to compensate authors for their works; of course most authors never make more than a small percentage of what the book actually makes through sales; agents, editors, printers, distributors and book stores all take sizable chunks of the money earned; all them profit from the author's initial efforts. I wonder if ultimately most authors might not do better publishing with Google Books initially (if Google ever opens up to such a concept); they might make more in the long run.
One last thought; you do realize that by posting in these forums, you allow people to profit from your labor without any compensation what so ever other than the pleasure of using these forums
.
--
Bill