A Good Day for Authors
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 by Patrick Ross
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Just two weeks ago I gave a presentation where I said sometimes we needed a legal process to sort out thorny issues, and cited the Google Book Search case where publishers were suing the search engine giant for reproducing copyrighted works given to them by major university libraries without obtaining the permission of copyright owners.
Well, today it seems that process has worked, and a settlement has been reached among publishers, libraries and Google. (Learn more here at the site of a Copyright Alliance member, the Association of American Publishers.) I won’t go into the details of the agreement; you can read the press release, statement by AAP Chairman Richard Sarnoff and FAQ online. Instead I’ll discuss the possible impact of this agreement assuming it is accepted by the court.
Under this system, access and payment is streamlined. For example, Google will fund the creation of a Book Rights Registry, in which it will be easier for any of us to gain access to printed works, whether in the public domain or under copyright. More importantly to writers (I confess a bias in that area), it will help empower those authors and their publishers to maintain their rights over online use of works, and provide an efficient means to be compensated for any online use.
Back before Google announced their deal with the libraries at the Universities of California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Stanford to reproduce their works and thus have both Google and the libraries maintain a digital copy, Google had gone to the Frankfurt Book Fair and announced a deal with major publishers to do this through the free market, with appropriate fees paid. They apparently quickly grew tired of that approach and instead chose the free approach the libraries offered, turning their backs on the very publishers they had been wooing.
It is refreshing to see we are finally where we should have been several years ago, developing a marketplace solution that allows copyright owners to grant access in return for compensation and allows those seeking access to written works to obtain it. I should also note that the libraries above participated in the talks and thus are presumably satisfied at the access this agreement gives to their patrons and others interested in access to works both copyrighted and public domain.
We see this model occasionally in the world of copyright, where rights clearances is a significant transaction cost so a system is set up to streamline it. The Copyright Clearance Center comes to mind as one example. You also occasionally hear advocacy groups that do not represent copyright owners or creators advocate for essentially compulsory licensing regimes that would be of tremendous benefit to the users they profess to support (in the short-run anyway) but would significantly dilute the rights of the creators, and thus hurt users in the long run.
Voluntary arrangements like this, where copyright owners have flexibility, are far superior, and frankly can’t be compared to a compulsory model. Here the rightsholder still can largely determine his or her own fate. I hope this system works as anticipated, and can be a model for future litigation involving massive infringement of creators’ rights, noting that rightsholders have every right to push litigation to a court verdict if they feel that is the best approach.
October 30th, 2008 at 8:30 am
EXPOSED - the fallacies of Google’s universal search
Bravo! Congratulations authors and book publishers. I applaud you for holding your ground.
Ten (10) years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed the revolutionary Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. Since then, everything in the copyright and technology industries in this country has changed … and not all for the better, as you might have expected. You see, in their rush to bring our laws into sync with the international community, Congress failed to write a succinct and non-ambiguous bill … and we need a succinct and non-ambiguous bill very badly. Believe me, I know. My small graphic arts development company, Imageline, was in the middle of a $60 million federal lawsuit regarding copyright infringement at the exact same time.
The creative copyright defense lawyers in this country have all made their fortune over the past decade, defending and confusing people based on these DMCA ambiguities in copyright law. Maybe that was the Congressional plan all along. After all, most of the folks up in Washington are lawyers and judges themselves, now, also, aren’t they?
Well, the rocket scientists, investment bankers, copyright lawyers, and software engineers in Redmond and Mountain View are a hell of lot smarter than the politicians … and way more devious. We learned that lesson the hard way, as well.
You see, web-based search, aka Adwords, was just about to start its meteoric rise to top of the world in the late 1990s. And the Google engineers were the only folks who had a clue how to make all of this work. Google began to dominate web-based search, went public, and set out on the path to organize and conquer the world.
I love web-based word search and even maintained an open mind as to the value proposition it creates for our economy as a whole. Plus, it was fun in the late 90’s to see several U.S.-based companies still dominant on the global stage and spreading their technologies rapidly around the world. Perhaps for the first time, the gigantic digital divide we have in this world, would start to narrow? Pretty naive thinking now that I think about it.
But Google, and the companies that learned not to innovate, but to simply mimic the folks in Mountain View at every turn, apparently had another plan. They would expand “search” to images, video, published books, medical records, private homes, x-rays, and everything else on the planet … and in outer space, for that matter. And now that they were so popular and successful, they wouldn’t even bother to ask the disorganized and clueless creative people who own all of the copyrights for permission. Google set out to continue its Internet search and advertising dominance into image search, video search, book search, medical search, and other universal searches, including every other aspect of our lives, both public and private.
And no one had the guts to even question the Googlites, let alone try to stop them. All Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Ask.com could do was either beg Google to work with them or put teams of engineers in place to try and replicate the various Google search platforms almost identically. In other words, if stealing from people, promoting illegal products and services, and walking off the cliff, was good enough for mighty Google, then doing all of these things and walking off the cliff was fine with all the rest of them, as well. Really pretty disgusting for what had previously been viewed as an innovative proud industry, with good business practices and ethics, don’t you think?
And then Baidu (China), Yandex (Russia), Daum (Korea), Lycos (Europe), Rediif (India), and other international search engine companies decided they wanted a piece of the action, as well. Image search, and practically everything else search, would become a common tool throughout the Internet world. After all, images are the world’s common denominator, aren’t they? Copyright holders be damned.
In the early days, most copyright holders caved. They were afraid of Google and new technologies they did not understand. Federal judges, who didn’t really have a clue what was going on, allowed Google’s massive army of lawyers to convince them that the DMCA, which was originalyl designed to protect copyright owners, was actually intended by Congress to provide a safe haven for technology companies who wanted to infringe, and to do anything they pleased with other people’s property. Even if they made billions of dollars by doing so, they could still claim that their pirate ships could sail smoothly over the rough cyberseas and then pull safely into safe harbors authorized by the DMCA. NONSENSE! This has been, and continues to be, one of the grandest corporate scams and get rich quick scandals this country has ever witnessed.
Unfortunately, the technology scams gained even more traction, and more life, once the financial industry scandals up on Wall Street, and in the mortgage lending industries, started to surface and take center stage.
So, here we are today. Three major good news events for copyright owners have just recently occurred. Could it mean the end of Google’s dominant evil ways? I sure hope so. And so do millions and millions of people who create our jobs and produce the vast majority of our copyrighted works in this country … our small businesses and creative individuals … our illustrators, designers, photographers, videographers, film producers, musicians, book publishers, cartoonists, journalists, graphic programmers, comic strip artists, poets, digitizers, and animators … you get the picture. All of the people that the Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo engineers, lawyers, and finance people hide back in the corner on the 18th floor.
Here is the recent good news for small businesses and copyright owners:
1. This week’s news that Google has to pay book publishers and authors $125 million dollars and cease its plan to digitize all books, whether the copyright owners wanted them to or not. Microsoft apparently has already abandoned its Google clone in this arena. Yahoo supports a more open industry plan.
2. Courts in Germany have followed the wisdom of courts in Belgium and France and ruled against “Google Image Search” procedures, in a huge ruling that will hopefully set the new precedent on the global stage. Google can no longer ‘willfully infringe for profit’ says the court.
3. Courts in China have actually ruled against its own search engine giant, Baidu, as well as Yahoo China, and found their “image search” features pointing consumers to obviously infringing web sites were, indeed, unlawful … even in China who leads the world in piracy these days.
Courts in the United States have fallen behind the rest of the world in this area, and it is shameful, indeed, since the vast majority of the world’s copyrighted works are still produced her in America. But the copyright enforcement pendulum has finally started to swing the other way … towards the hard working people who deserve to have their copyrighted works protected by the government in the country they live in. How can anyone debate that argument with a straight face. Google executives and attorneys apparently don’t know how to make a straight face, I’m afraid. They all appear to be crooked, or at least hypocritical, when it comes to protection of other people’s copyrights. Isn’t Google’s now famous CEO an attorney as well?
So, “bravo” again to book publishers and authors … you held your ground. You did us all proud. And all of the rest of us in the copyright industries are thrilled that you did so. THANK YOU!
Your publicly recognized settlement is a step in the right direction for all copyright holders in the U.S. from my point of view. And in other countries, as well. I, for one, believe the days of Google executives, investment bankers, software engineers, copyright lawyers, and rocket scientists making up their own self-serving rules of conduct and codes of ethics in this country are finally over. How there ever was a debate as to the legality of Google unilaterally deciding it could make illegal copies of any copyrighted material they chose to without the copyright owners permission is beyond me.
I say we have all had enough of this corporate greed, corruption, and scandal. How about you? In fact, I believe this is yet another symptom of the kind of crooked corporate society we have lived under here in the United States for the past 8-10 years. Enough is enough.
Don’t you think it is quite a coincidence that during this exact same time period Google accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars, while never really inventing or creating much of anything new and original themselves?
Apparently, when you set your own rules and start to feel so powerful that you can ignore the laws of the land, this is what happens, folks. Ask George Bush and Dick Chaney. It’s that pure and simple. How many Wall Street bailouts will we need to see before the rest of us open up our eyes?
Book search is just tip of the iceberg where the exposure of the true Google is concerned.. From what I can tell, ‘image search’ is emerging as perhaps the final Waterloo for mighty Google. Why? Because Google infringes more copyrighted visual material through its image and video search operations than virtually all other technology industry players combined. Hundreds of millions of copyright violations each and every month. An no one has thus far had the guts to stop them. No competitor … no government agencies … no judges … no judiciary committees … no Congressional hearings … no copyright industry boycotts … no nothing! Except perhaps for Viacom, who filed a billion dollar a lawsuit against YouTube/Google well over a year ago.
But an image and/or video search engine class action lawsuit, and one that is easily 5-10 times larger than the book search suit that just settled out of court, is imminent. I know of about a dozen companies, mine included, who are busy gathering documented evidence to bring on such a suit. Hopefully, before Google wipes out half of the legitimate copyright owners in this country as it tries to do to digital photographers, illustrators, designers, digitizers, graphic programmers, and animators what it tried to do to authors and book publishers, as well.
“We have the right to copy and organize all of your digital images whether you want us to or not”, says Google either directly or through inference.
Wait a second. My little company, Imageline, invented the software category of digital graphic arts content back in in early 1980s when the Google founders were still in diapers. We do not want Google to organize our proprietary copyrighted images. They are already organized. And we don’t want Google making copies of our digital artwork, either. That’s a direct violation of the copyright laws in this country, and the rules under which we agreed to develop and produce these works in the first place long ago. All of our copyrighted works have been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in the exact way we were directed by Copyright Office officials.
Keep your corrupt hands off of our images, Google. Go play with your own photos, maps, or whatever it is that you produce and actually own.
In my view, the entire copyright industry, and the populous, in general, has become sick and tired of the arrogance, hypocrisy, and greed of Google. In spite of their “do no evil” mantra, Google has actually grown to compete with Microsoft for the title of the ‘Supreme Evil Empire’, in my opinion.
I, for one, am sick and tired of Google teaching my children that stealing is okay in the new digital age. No, it’s not, Google! You are misguided and no one wants you to use the money provided by public shareholders to copy other people’s copyrighted works, buy more757s, park them in your own back yards, explore outer space, give each other massages, or organize the world’s information anymore, regardless of what your rocket scientists have to say.
The book publishers’ victory is just the tip of one of the most toxic icebergs this country has ever seen. Wait and see.
Thanks for listening.
George Riddick
Chairman/CEO
Imageline, Inc.
griddick@imageline2.com
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
[...] on the recent deal between Google and the publishers over the Google Book search service. Here was our reaction on the morning of the announcement, and here is Professor Gibson’s [...]