For the past few years, one of the most controversial subjects in the digital realm has been Google’s plan to collect, scan and digitize the world’s books into a vast virtual library. It is probably one of the most ambitious projects since the construction of the Library of Alexandria. The settlement of a dispute between Google and the Author’s Guild has exposed some legitimate concerns from well-meaning groups as well as some jealousy and hypocrisy from Google’s competition.
Most of the criticism is focused on three key areas: alleged copyright infringement, privacy concerns and concerns over the exploitation of orphan works.
Copyright
Opponents of Google Books believe that Google is doing an end-run around copyright protection by designing it’s database as an “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”. While it’s technically true that “opt-out” may lead to copyright infringement on a large scale and that Google could easily address concerns by making it “opt-in” (and I suspect Judge Denny Chin will ultimately order in favor of doing this), I don’t believe “opt-out” is substantially unfair to authors. Back when I used to publish a monthly newsletter promoting my press, I would usually feature at least one item that had been previously published in one of my publications as a teaser for that publication. Given that I never knew ahead of time what piece I’d choose to reprint and close deadlines, it wasn’t practical for me to contact the writers individually to ask permission in the hopes that they’d respond in a timely fashion so I did this as an “opt-out”. I could do this because the writers I’d published were all on my mailing list so I just sent a general announcement explaining the situation and informing them if they didn’t want me to use their work all they had to do was e-mail me if they had a problem. As I recall, in the 3 years I published the newsletter, only a couple of writers expressed concerns and only one of those individuals opted-out. Obviously, Google is doing something on a far grander scale than my forgettable newsletter, but I suspect, like me, Google’s motivation is not really nefarious, but for convenience sake. Opt-out isn’t that unfair — just that opt-in is fairer to writers and I suspect that most writers, if given the option to opt-in instead of opt-ing out would be eager to take part. Indeed, a lot of authors have already chosen to allow their books to be scanned. I further suspect most writers are either indifferent to Google Books or in favor of the project as public opposition to the plan among writers has been surprisingly weak.
Privacy
This argument takes the proverbial cake and, I believe, is the weakest objection critics of Google Books are making. For one thing, critics are ignoring the fact that every time you go online, you divulge information about yourself. We accept this. That Google Books will collect information about our reading habits is a given. So does Goodreads, so does virtual bookshelf, so does Barnes and Noble.com and so does Amazon. The idea that Google collects this information to “spy” on us or sell or gift that information to governments and other third parties is fucking ridiculous. Point two is that I don’t really think the government cares that you’ve read Wuthering Heights twice or that you’ve perused a medical text on best acne treatments or whathaveyou. And since I doubt Google’s going to be scanning books on how to build incendiary devices other dangerous books, so this criticism is just paranoia run amok. Point three is that with social networking sites, email, e-tailers, etc., you cannot really address privacy concerns absolutely without dismantling the Internet altogether.
Orphaned Works
Orphan works, as previously discussed, are works that are still technically under copyright but that the creator cannot be indentified and/or located to grant permission to a third party to use. Now, I don’t believe this is as big of a problem as we are being led to believe.
Copyright is all about controlling access to intellectual property in an effort to exploit that property for commercial gain. Obviously, the greater the access to said property, the less commercially valuable. A bookstore that sells 5000 volumes a year is more valuable to the publisher and the author than a library that purchases a couple hundred new volumes a year and loans out to 5000 or so patrons. But one could argue that, while the library is less valuable to the author or publisher, it’s much more valuable to society at large because it exposes people to books who couldn’t otherwise afford books thus increasing the number of educated readers. One could further argue that our Founding Fathers intended the latter by intentionally limiting the former. Back in the day, copyright protection only last for a certain amount of time and then the work entered the public domain. These days, what usually happens is that the author’s literary estate is incorporated and representatives of that estate renew the copyright before it expires, thus keeping the work out of the public domain indefinitely. These estates in collusion with the publishers (which are almost entirely own by big media conglomerates) have been fighting against limits to copyright for years. In fact, modern copyright law has been less interested in protecting individual authors and serving the public interest and more about protecting the commercial interests of big media companies like Disney and Rupert Murdoch’s empire. To the extent that orphan works is a problem, it’s a problem created by extending copyright far beyond it’s natural lifecycle. Until Congress is able to clearly define what criteria constitutes a fair and reasonable search to identify the copyright owners of Orphan Works and sets a clear statute of limitation on orphan work status before such a work automatically falls into the public domain, the problem will inevitably become a bigger problem in the future. And if it is true that Google’s remedy to the problem is inadequate, their book registry is at least an improvement over similar proposals in the flawed attempts by Congress to address the problem in the Shawn Bentley Act.
My own assessment is the Google Books settlement is more good than bad. Microsoft only opposes it because they have failed miserably in creating a successful competing search engine and are against anything that enhances Google’s value in that arena. Sour grapes if you ask me, because Google isn’t preventing Microsoft from building a better search engine. Nor does Google’s book project preclude anyone else from doing it.
Publishers and literary agents naturally hate it because they see it as a threat to their bottom line and their level of control. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are against it largely for the same reason. This isn’t necessarily true, but that remains to be seen how this will play-out once the project progresses to its next phase. It could prove to be the opposite for publishers and online booksellers.
Certain foreign countries are against it. Europe because there is a competing book scanning project in the works. Asia is up in arms. 15 authors from India filed objections. China also objects. Since when do Asian countries care about copyright? I think this is funny considering that Asian countries are the biggest culprits when it comes to pirating English language books, including American bestsellers. And they’re worried about Google? They should be grateful to Google for providing access to writers most of us have never heard of.
So, I’m thinking, yes, let Google do books. I personally see the Google library as a great leveler of the digital playing field. Let’s give it a chance to succeed.
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