Couldn't help but point out Tim O'Reilly's op-ed in the New York Times on Google Print.
He's missing the point, intentionally or not. This is not about whether Google Print is good or bad for authors...I have no doubt it is, on par, a good thing (though not as good as he implies...I'll get to that in a minute). The intellectual property laws don't care whether your infringing use is good for the right holder or not. They don't say, "Don't copy stuff! Unless you think it would be good for the author, in which case, hey, go ahead!" You have the god-given right to mismanage your own protected works to your heart's content, and that's exactly what the Author's Guild is doing. Yay for them.
The issue here is control over the material. Google essentially went behind the copyrighters' backs, and that's why they're pissed off. This is a lawsuit about deterrence, not damages. It's a similar issue to audio/video filesharing. It doesn't matter whether P2P networks increase record sales or not. Much as it may be a racket and suck in general, the RIAA owns the copyrights, and they, not you, get to determine what's good marketing and what's not.
I mentioned Google Print not being as good as it seems for authors. This is my general complaint about hype over internet technologies, be it blogs, online shopping, or what-have-you. Some ADHD mental midget inevitably jumps up and exclaims how Technology X is going to change everything for every X you can think of. Now it's Google Print. All those obscure books will become popular suddenly! Lilly Jerkmeoff's book on humane kitten catapulting for rural Iowans will suddenly get the attention it deserves! Yay!
Dude. There are a fixed number of avenues through which people find stuff. The fact that some of them are now web sites doesn't change that. Why do you think everybody's so damn excited about Google? It's because people are lazy and only search for stuff in Google. I don't care if your kitten catapulting literature is available on the web somewhere. If it doesn't come up in the first few links on Google, it might as well not exist.
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2 comments:
A copyright holder's control of what may be done with their work is not absolute. There is a legal doctrine of Fair Use. One of the factors in weighing whether a use of a work is Fair Use is impact on the market. So whether Google Print will be good or bad for most authors is a factor in whether it will be allowed. At any rate, a court will decide, not you.
That's not even slightly true.
Fair use is a very restricted defense against infringement. I'll quote you the relevent section of the Copyright Act of 1976:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright"
These are very specific exceptions intended to allow people, academics in particular, to directly use a particular work in order to critique and/or build off of it. It isn't a blanket exception that anyone and their mother can use if someday, somewhere, the infringment _might_ be used in something related to academics or free speech.
I know what I'm talking about. I've taken an intellectual property class at a law school. ;)
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