There is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It actually is. Do take a look the website. It's an absolutely fascinating place and aims very much to both store and disseminate the world's knowledge. Well worth a visit should you happen to be in Alexandria. It's the only place I've seen the kind of book scanner that Google use actually in action, which was very interesting.

I looked at the website before I responded to your initial post. It's not really clear from the website that is what the purpose is. Perhaps one has to visit it in Alexandria to get a clearer idea of what they are trying to do. I suspect it helps if one reads French or Arabic. When I searched for various authors it talked about various books and the number of copies, which lead me to think they were collecting books, not making them available online.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

To me: copyright is a way to protect the creator from being ripped off by some unscrupulous person that is out to make a quick buck off someone else's hard word.

It sounds like some in this thread are saying artists don't need money. Or they should be generous and let everyone profit but not themselves.
To those people I want to ask would you do your job for free. Or even better, would you do your job and then let your boss pay someone else for the work you did?
If the answer is no, then why should the creators of books be any different?

Oh and on the cookbook I previously mentioned, you can get a new and different version in December.
So if you want a holiday cookbook from Southern Living you just have to have a little patience.

Strawman alert! Strawman alert!

No one in this thread has said that authors shouldn't be paid for their work. That is an absolute strawman you are throwing out. But if they want to be paid, they sure better make it available!

I believe in paying authors more than most. There are a number of books where I purchased the hardback, paperback, ebook and audiobook. I want my favorite authors to make lots of money and keep writing. I'm selfish, I want my fix! But once again, it's a social bargain, not a property right.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Of course, the fact that a work by a dead, relatively obscure author is not available probably means little to the world as a whole.

True.

Here is one of many possible examples of Pulitzer Prize winning books that are surely in the 25 million, and now are expensive and impossible to obtain if you need an eBook (for example, because you can only read large print):

https://www.amazon.com/Grover-Clevel.../dp/B0006AO0FA

[crossi]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Because they have no actual obligation to the public.
Heck, if I want to release "The adventures of Cinisajoy", that is my prerogative.
If I decide later to pull said book, that is also my choice. I have no obligation to the public to make sure the book, movie or cd is available for all eternity.
So now let me phrase it like this.
What gives the public the right to tell me what I should do with MY property?
Why should the public have that right?

You have the right to do what you want with your property. If you want to keep your diary private hide it or lock it up and it will never be published. But what right do you have to demand that the public pay for the expense of guarding your so called property from being copied? Your property your problem not mine. You take care of protecting it. I might pay for it if it had some benefit to me, but how long I'm willing to provide that service depends on it's continuing benefit to me.

[HarryT]

Nobody's suggest that the public pay for something to be guarded. Simply that the law provides a mechanism to punish those who take it without the owner's permission, just as is the case with physical property. It's your responsibility to protect your own property, but there's a legal mechanism to punish those who violate your protection and take it anyway.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

To me: copyright is a way to protect the creator from being ripped off by some unscrupulous person that is out to make a quick buck off someone else's hard word.

It sounds like some in this thread are saying artists don't need money. Or they should be generous and let everyone profit but not themselves.
To those people I want to ask would you do your job for free. Or even better, would you do your job and then let your boss pay someone else for the work you did?
If the answer is no, then why should the creators of books be any different?

Silly rhetoric. I won't repeat the real purpose of copyright because it seems to be pointless to do so. You are selectively correct: copyright is meant to protect the creator. You simply select to leave out why, instead running off into speculation and accusation.

Once again, people shouting at each other from their distant mountaintops.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

True.

Here is one of many possible examples of Pulitzer Prize winning books that are surely in the 25 million, and now are expensive and impossible to obtain if you need an eBook (for example, because you can only read large print):

https://www.amazon.com/Grover-Clevel.../dp/B0006AO0FA

According to the review, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1933. That book should be in the PD, shouldn't it? No, I guess, they renewed the copyright, which would mean 95 years after it was published. Yes, specialty books like that are my pet bugaboo with regards to ebooks. Kind of odd that it's no longer in print. Perhaps it's an orphaned work, or the copyright holder (the author died in 1971) isn't all that interested. That's pretty common once the original author dies. The Tolkien family is very much the exception rather than the rule.

In general, most parties agree that orphaned works are a major issue with regards to copyright law. In the US, there have been several proposals for putting in a mechanism for a good faith search, followed by a method of putting a reasonable share of the revenue into a trust for any copyright holder who may surface in the future. So far, they haven't gone anywhere. I guess there are some significant players who like the status quo and see no reason to compromise. I suspect that this will change when certain political figures in the US retire or the filibuster is finally ended.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Nobody's suggest that the public pay for something to be guarded. Simply that the law provides a mechanism to punish those who take it without the owner's permission, just as is the case with physical property. It's your responsibility to protect your own property, but there's a legal mechanism to punish those who violate your protection and take it anyway.

That's what copyright is, isn't it? The public pays, as a minimum via court cost? Providing that legal mechanism isn't free. Every law in the book has a cost associated with it. It may be generally a hidden cost, but it exist.

For the most part, I think your attempt to draw a parallel between real property and copyright doesn't work. Once I sell a copy of a book, there is no practical protection that an author can take to keep it from being copied again. It's very much different than locking the door on my house or car. The only option that an author has is an after the fact civil lawsuit which may or may not be successful.

Just as important, it a very hard sell to a jury. That's why one generally only sees such lawsuits against someone making money off the copyright violation, usually significant money. Otherwise, the cost of the suit in lawyer fees ends up more than you can recover, even if you win.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Back when copyright was limited to 28 years, plus a renewal of 28 years, there was little chance of significant works being lost. With copyright extended to life plus 90, there is a great deal of chance that many works will be lost in time.

Let me give an example. I have a paperback, A World Called Camelot by Arthur H Landis, published in 1976 from an earlier serial Let There be Magick under the name of James B Keaveny. Landis died in 1986. He does not appear to have any near kin. The book was last printed in 1982 by DAW. Odds are pretty good that by the time the book goes into public domain, both the book and the author will be forgotten. It can be found on scribd and I suspect it's probably on some of the pirate sites, and I believe that it's one of the books that google scanned (I don't see it there, but his other books are there).


Of course, the fact that a work by a dead, relatively obscure author is not available probably means little to the world as a whole. It's not like the cure for cancer is buried in the book. But my point is that it's needless. It's a situation where no one wins and everyone loses.

Let's not play that game ok. Without really trying, I could probably find at least 100 books that fit your parameters.
But my dear, that is half the fun of collecting is finding a rare gem.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by crossi

You have the right to do what you want with your property. If you want to keep your diary private hide it or lock it up and it will never be published. But what right do you have to demand that the public pay for the expense of guarding your so called property from being copied? Your property your problem not mine. You take care of protecting it. I might pay for it if it had some benefit to me, but how long I'm willing to provide that service depends on it's continuing benefit to me.

The point is copyright gives me the right to take that unscrupulous person for illegally benefitting from my work.
And my response was in response to the one that said if I made my work unavailable he should be able to copy it and make sure it was available to the public.

So yes, my property my problem but the law allows me some recourse.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

That's what copyright is, isn't it? The public pays, as a minimum via court cost? Providing that legal mechanism isn't free. Every law in the book has a cost associated with it. It may be generally a hidden cost, but it exist.

For the most part, I think your attempt to draw a parallel between real property and copyright doesn't work. Once I sell a copy of a book, there is no practical protection that an author can take to keep it from being copied again. It's very much different than locking the door on my house or car. The only option that an author has is an after the fact civil lawsuit which may or may not be successful.

Just as important, it a very hard sell to a jury. That's why one generally only sees such lawsuits against someone making money off the copyright violation, usually significant money. Otherwise, the cost of the suit in lawyer fees ends up more than you can recover, even if you win.

If you sell the original book, then there is no recourse because the author has been paid.
If you make a copy and sell it, then yes the author or whoever owns the copyright does have recourse.

[Lemurion]

Oddly enough, I remember reading all the Arthur H. Landis books as a youth and had no idea he was dead.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

According to the review, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1933. That book should be in the PD, shouldn't it? No, I guess, they renewed the copyright, which would mean 95 years after it was published. Yes, specialty books like that are my pet bugaboo with regards to ebooks. Kind of odd that it's no longer in print. Perhaps it's an orphaned work, or the copyright holder (the author died in 1971) isn't all that interested.

It's not odd for non-fiction.

Of course, there also are a lot of well-reviewed out of print fiction titles among those 25 million books. But, at least with fiction, a few of the best titles, for each year, are eBooks. When the post-1922 the prize winner is fiction, it is usually in print, and, except for the least known authors, is also an eBook. Here are lesser-known fiction Pulitzer Prize fiction examples:

https://www.amazon.com/Honey-Horn-No...ey+in+the+horn

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Autumn-...=UTF8&qid=&sr=



What I can't get, except via interlibrary loan, is most of the prize-winning non-fiction.

My well-known non-fiction example author, Alan Nevins, has a few titles still in print, such as this next one, so his estate must be reachable:

https://www.amazon.com/Fr%C3%A9mont-...2991352&sr=1-8

As for copyright renewal, as alluded to in the OP article, verifying that copyright was renewed often might not be that hard, but being absolutely certain a title was NOT renewed is difficult due to possibilities such as title variations. I'm guessing this is why is is often claimed that most books, back when renewal was needed, didn't get renewed, and yet you won't see these titles at www.gutenberg.org, or in the Patricia Clark Library. Someone who knows more can correct me, but I'm thinking that the risk of having to pay the litigation cost and fine for even a single US 1923-1963 title, for which the renewal was accidentally missed, is so high that no one can risk it.

In theory, someone could start a business offering copyright title insurance for books published in the US 1923-1963, comparable to the title insurance against missed liens purchased when buying a home. In practice, since no one is selling that insurance, it must be financially infeasible. So, as explained in the OP link, Google proposed to compensate the authors and estates regardless of renewal.

And, just to remind people, Google would have allowed authors and estates to charge, for the eBooks, whatever they wanted up to $29.99, of which the rights-holder would get $18.89 (63 percent). It is only the titles where no rights-holder came forward (or where the rights holder was content with the Google recommendation) where Google would set the price, 63 percent of which would go to the Books Rights Registry.

This all seems to me a little like the accepted ASCAP music royalty scheme.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

And, just to remind people, Google would have allowed authors and estates to charge, for the eBooks, whatever they wanted up to $29.99, of which the rights-holder would get $18.89 (63 percent). It is only the titles where no rights-holder came forward (or where the rights holder was content with the Google recommendation) where Google would set the price, 63 percent of which would go to the Books Rights Registry.

This all seems to me a little like the accepted ASCAP music royalty scheme.

Which all sounds reasonable, and is I suppose, but what irked me was the way they went about it.

For anyone else, if you wanted to set up a business based on copying copyrighted works then you'd need to arrange licenses in advance. Google just went ahead and did it. Then they acted as if not showing more than a snippet at a time was not a copyright violation, which may be true, except that the copy they had made in order to do that was unauthorised. So even if they scanned it and never showed it to anyone it was an unauthorised copy. The fact that this was ruled to be fair use, as if Google were you or I making copies for personal use, well it doesn't seem to me what fair use was intended for.

I concede that the end result would have been a good thing but it's the sense that Google feels that because of that (or because they can afford armies of lawyers) the rules don't really apply to them, it's that that annoys me.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by latepaul

Which all sounds reasonable, and is I suppose, but what irked me was the way they went about it.

For anyone else, if you wanted to set up a business based on copying copyrighted works then you'd need to arrange licenses in advance. Google just went ahead and did it. Then they acted as if not showing more than a snippet at a time was not a copyright violation, which may be true, except that the copy they had made in order to do that was unauthorised. So even if they scanned it and never showed it to anyone it was an unauthorised copy. The fact that this was ruled to be fair use, as if Google were you or I making copies for personal use, well it doesn't seem to me what fair use was intended for.

I concede that the end result would have been a good thing but it's the sense that Google feels that because of that (or because they can afford armies of lawyers) the rules don't really apply to them, it's that that annoys me.

In the US fair use doctrine, just because a copy is unauthorized, doesn't mean that it violates copyright. I suspect that the reason Google didn't try to arrange licenses in advance is two fold. First, it is completely impossible to do that since you would have to contact each copyright holder individually. The music industry has a couple of music clearing houses that you can use, but that is part of a long standing consent decree. Books doesn't have such a mechanism. The second is that non commercial archiving has been upheld in the past. That's why so many libraries have things like back issues of newspapers and magazines on microfliche. The idea that individuals can make backups comes from this case history, not the reverse.

It really doesn't have anything to do with Google having a lot of money and lawyers, but rather that they were on pretty firm legal footing in doing so. Where they ran into trouble is when they started talking about selling the digitized books. That does require licensing with the copyright holders.

There is actually a lot of case law with regards to copyright and fair use. Fair use is for the most part common law (i.e. judgical rather than legislative), though it was finally included in the copyright act from the mid 70's.

One of the issues here is that some want everything to be black or white, while in reality, it's simply various shades of grey.