Richard Russo, writing for Medium:
Issues of ownership and fair play are at the heart of The Authors Guild’s lawsuit against internet giant Google, which has, without permission from authors and without paying for their copyrighted material, digitized millions of their books while ignoring, as if these were irrelevant, their creators’ claims to ownership. Google has justified this theft by arguing that the use they were making of our property was “transformative,” a public service. They wouldn’t be selling our books for profit, just providing a research tool that displays only snippets, which would fall under the doctrine of “fair use.” More information would be available to more people. Ignoring the original theft, the courts have so far agreed.
I’ve had a number of books appear on Google Books (go here, then do a search for “Dave Mark”). I was never asked my opinion about including these books in the process, and I was certainly never asked permission, even though I own the copyright on most of these.
A real sign of popularity of a book is that moment when someone on the internet makes a copy of the book and puts it on a warez site. I’ve watched this happen again and again. There’s no stopping it. As these downloads start appearing, you can issue takedowns, but the same content will just appear on a different site in a matter of hours. There’s a sense of powerlessness that comes over you. Once you release your book, you no longer have control over it.
That same feeling hit me the first time I saw one of my books on Google Books. As Richard says:
What would I and my fellow authors have done if Google had come to us, respecting our ownership of what we’d created, and asked our permission? I guess we’ll never know, because they didn’t feel the need.
If only they had asked.
Digitizing the works of copyright authors does nothing for research and is not a public service.
Google has been intruding on this issue for many years and seems to ignore any rules or laws, simply plowing ahead.
Good for this lawsuit.
So if you found a snippet in one book via a search, that you found useful, you wouldn’t be more likely to purchase that book?
Most of this frustration is because there’s a popular myth about owning something because you have a copyright. You really don’t, and never have. What you get with a copyright is the right to exclusively profit for some defined period of time.
Google only skates this line when they do something like place ads next to its search of such content.
Copyright owners may not like it, but that doesn’t define policy or law. Public interest is the primary consideration and is only counteracted by the limits of copyright.
Lots of copy”right” holders are abusive and in the wrong. Just look at Disney…. or even Metallica, in the past.
I do believe artists, poets and writers should have fair compensation, yet what is fair and this should eventually get to the public domain. If the work is ‘popular’, pirates are not always hurting the creator and I would guess, this also helps to increase sales and popularity – though not always. DRM often does more to kill – look at Blu-ray or the abysmal ‘Ultra Violet’, that makes people ultra-violent….
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Let’s ask a few authors, like Dave Mark, to see how that generally works out.
I am sure it can work out. I’m sure it won’t work out… Why don’t we call the RIAA or Steven King or Louis CK or Metallica$h, or Disney?
So as long as it works for famous people, it should work for everyone? Nope.