Sorry. I need information, though.
Is the Author's Guild suing Google for indexing books, or for making their index available online? Because as I see it (common sense, dude) Google could store fifty million books by scanning them in, and that wouldn't be a problem as long as they just sat on their database and made sure it didn't fall into the hands of people who would make it available on EBay or something. Making copies is not the issue here. It's how Google is using their copies: they're making it free for anyone to see it.
This is the same as if Google took copyrighted content on the internet that people have to pay to see and made it free for people to see, e.g. articles from certain magazines, some crackpot's $300 diet plan, etc. See what I'm getting at? Indexing webpages that are free to view anyway on the internet is not the same as indexing these books.
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Wendelin:
ReplyDeleteIf you dont want your work to be indexed scanned or published. Then go ahead and opt out.
The idea of copyright has been taken too far. The idea that a work is copyrighted for 100 years after the author's death is plain stupid.
Copyrights and patents were intended to bring ideas and patents into the public domain. Not sustain monopolies on the material for ever.
The only beneficiary of the successive extension of copyright laws has been Walt Disney.
Google scanning all the world's books and making them available for free is the greatest thing that ever happenned to the consumer of literature.
If you hate the idea, opt out. Google lets you do that. Dont deride the idea itself.
NMK, Google's using large amounts of content produced by people to generate revenue for themselves, without their permission. It's neither legal nor fair to make this an opt-out system, rather than an opt-in.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for their so-called 'opt-out' procedures, see my previous posts on the subject. It seems to only exist in their promotional literature, whereas in reality it sppears to mean: 'tell us you want to opt out, and we'll find someone bigger than yu to tell us we don't have to'.
PS: If you don't like the way copyright laws work, challenge that, change that. Don't pretend the law doesn't exist and trample all over the rights of even living authors in the process.
ReplyDelete== nmk: Google scanning all the world's books and making them available for free is the greatest thing that ever happenned to the consumer of literature ==
ReplyDeleteAgreed! But as the US constitution says, you're entitled to pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself, ie. you cannot break laws etc. Also note that at price 0, supply will soon dwindle to 0 (and I'm not talking about amateur authors here: no one pays to watch gulli cricket).
Saurabh