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stbalbach |
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March 22, 2011 06:42:08pm |
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Google Book settlement denied |
Judge Chin has denied Google's settlement offer. The settlement would have created an opt-out Book Registry where intellectual property owners could register and receive any shared revenue from book sales with Google. Unclaimed revenue would go to charity after 10 years.
Judge Chin's decision is
posted here and is interesting reading, easy as far as legal stuff goes.
I'm not sure what happens next, but based on the ruling, Google might be able to come up with a new settlement offer (such as changing it to an opt-in), or Chin suggested it might be better decided by Congress, rather than Google, how to handle the commercial exploitation of orphan books. I agree with these solutions, other countries are doing it via legislation and not corporate mechanisms. The whole thing seemed like a grasping attempt by Google to lock in a monopoly on culture under the guise of doing good.
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garthus |
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March 23, 2011 09:10:02pm |
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Re: Google Book settlement denied |
I read this case, interesting decision. Orphan works should be Public Domain unless the owner appears to claim his rights. Google just saw a chance to make some money here. I think that once someone makes a digital copy of these books and posts them to the archive it will be harder for something like this to happen in the future.
Gerry
This post was modified by garthus on 2011-03-24 04:10:02
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Poster:
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stbalbach |
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March 24, 2011 01:27:00pm |
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Re: Google Book settlement denied |
Agreed. If Google was serious about making orphan works more available, it would build and sell an affordable book scanning machine, and encourage individuals to sort it out on a per book basis (like at Internet Archive) using the law the way it is written, instead of trying to create new law or (possibly now) lobby Congress to give them special rights. They have too much money and are trying to re-write the rules to their favor, it's like Disney and copyright extension.
I'm surprised there is not a collaborative project, like Project Gutenberg or LibriVox, but focused on scanning books published in the 1923-1963(?) time-frame (the ones that have not been renewed) using DIY book scanners and books from libraries.
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Poster:
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garthus |
Date:
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March 25, 2011 10:25:29am |
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Re: Google Book settlement denied |
Most of the material which I have been scanning comes from that time period. This should be a priority before Google and its ilk can have their way.
Gerry
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Poster:
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stbalbach |
Date:
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March 25, 2011 11:35:41am |
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Re: Google Book settlement denied |
Yes, there is a gold mine of material out there waiting to be digitized.
I just found
Project Gutenberg Consortia Center. It looks like a project to focus on the post-1923 works. It says:
"..this center acts as a clearinghouse for eBooks presumed to be public domain in the United States, but whose copyright data are not yet sufficient to pass the extreme copyright research required for inclusion in the general Project Gutenberg collection as per copyright requirements in the United States. There will also be Project Gutenberg Consortia Centers for "life +50," "life +70" countries, and hopefully even for "life +60" countries such as India, Venezuela, etc."
For example I found a book there I want to read,
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), originally housed at
World Public Library, since formatted and
uploaded to Internet Archive's Community Text library. Interesting tangle of projects.
TVNews
OpenLibrary
Jeff Kaplan