Google, Copyright and No Word Count

[rolanni]

So, last night, instead of writing, I played around for a couple hours on the electronic copyright office and spent the money donated by kind, kind people (Thank You, Kind People) to register a buncha Lee and Miller titles. I still need to print out the bar-codes, and then we need to match them with the books, then bundle them up to be mailed, but -- that project is well underway.

For those who asked, yes, we did come up with two copies of all the relevant titles, though Pilots Choice has to go as trade paperback, that being the best available edition. Plan B was, just for a touch of irony, the only title Meisha Merlin had been registered with the copyright office.

I do see, from various lists and from notes attached to the previous entry that a Federal judge has extended the Google opt-in/opt-out deadline until September. Also, the Justice Department is asking questions in an anti-trust direction.

Discussions in various places around the net. Here's a couple links:

http://oncopyright.copyright.com/2009/04/28/opt-out-deadline-and-fairness-hearing-in-google-book-search-settlement-delayed/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/technology/internet/29google.html?_r=2&hp

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4714


I've claimed books on Google, but haven't done anything else. I'll be listening to the continuing discussion very closely.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

And if you can make sense out of the Google thing, you have a better mind than I . . .

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the problem. I can't make much sense out of it, and neither can most of the writers we know. The settlement document is huge, cumbersome and it's not to Google's best interest to have it be readily understandable by Regular People -- i.e. not Google's lawyers.

It's also vitally important to how writers are going to make a living (or at least, money) from their work to figure this out. Google was rushing things so they could, yanno, have it their way, and now people are asking questions, and judges are listening, so that's good.

I tend to think that having One Big Pile of Every Book Ever Printed under the control of One Big Company, overtly on the side of Evil or not, is a Bad Idea.

Also? I find the notion that All Books Everywhere ought to be automatically available to everyone, always and forever...fantastical. Sometimes, for career reasons, an author may want to let a book go out of print and be unavailable for a while. That really ought to rest with the writer, since it's their career to manage.

And, on the gripping hand: One Big Pile of Books under the control of One Big Company? So ripe for censorship abuse. See the last Amazon.com kerfuffle.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Uh, yeah.

Funny how even the court seems vague on the concept that a copyright is effing *property*.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

Both Google and Amazon are ripe for antitrust action IMHO. And if Baker andTaylor colapses and leaves just Ingram in the distribution universe...

[(Anonymous)]

I believe that NO corporation, anywhere, at any time, deserves to "hold" the copyright of ANY author's creative works, be it music scores, cartoons, or books. An author's estate, perhaps, but only for a limited time. No one else. Corporations tend to live forever. Once a corporation gets control of someone's creative works, they don't ever let go. I believe it should be the option of the CREATOR of intellectual property to determine who benefits. And it looks to me as if this "Arrangement" means that all works that are presently in the public domain could even be gobbled up by Google.

Censorship is so easy to systematically implement if one controls books and other intellectual property that one did not personally produce with the sweat of one's own creativity. Whether that censorship is initially intended to be benign is utterly beside the point: it still has the potential of supression of a truth that was initially stated by the creator of the work.

Stick by your guns, Sharon & Steve! Get those copyrights in YOUR names: protect them and all future ones from being stolen by others.

They are, after all, your livelihood, present and future, are they not?

-Eta

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Hi, Eta. Thanks for your support :)

Just to be clear, Google doesn't want to steal our copyrights, they just want to control the market for books.

The copyright kerfuffle is Yet Another Bit of Meisha Merlin fallout. MM was required by the terms of our contract to copyright our books that they published on our behalf -- and they didn't do that. The Google Situation brought that problem forcibly to our attention, because, hey! if a book doesn't have a registered copyright, Google can offer the book for sale without being bound by the terms of its "Settlement."

...and to think that I didn't want to become a CPA because it was too complicated....