56 Comments

1. TedM:

First they came for the song writers.

And then they came for the script writers.

And now they come for the authors.

Sep 21, 2005 - 11:24 am 2. TedM:

First they came for the song writers.

And then they came for the script writers.

And now they come for the authors.

Sep 21, 2005 - 11:24 am 3. Syl:

I think I’m not understanding something. What does the search bring up? Does it bring up the entire text? Or just some paragraphs/sentences relevant to the search string?

If it’s the latter, I’m not sure what the problem is?

Sep 21, 2005 - 11:58 am 4. lindenen:

And if the search leads tons of people to your book then ordinarily wouldn’t even hear about it, you could make a lot of money…

Sep 21, 2005 - 12:24 pm 5. TedM:

Lindenen.

This all goes back to the arguments about music. Roger owns his books. It is his property. He has the right to decide what to do with it. No one in the world has a right to read Roger’s books.

Would you go into a bookstore and pocket one of his books and walk out without paying? Of course not. But that is just what you are doing if you download his book and read it or print it out.

I don’t know the solution to property rights in the new world in which we live, but first and foremost we have to protect property rights.

Sep 21, 2005 - 12:53 pm 6. Syl:

“Would you go into a bookstore and pocket one of his books and walk out without paying? Of course not. But that is just what you are doing if you download his book and read it or print it out.”

Is that what happens?

I honestly don’t know.

That wouldn’t be good.

I like the way, though, that people want to protect writers and musicians but don’t mention or even think about artists.

The number of images taken and photoshopped to make some point or another is considered A-OK in some blog circles. I consider that property theft.

Linking to an image is called bandwidth-stealing. So people think it’s okay to put the image on their own page instead…without permission. I consider that property theft.

In artist circles, you link to the page the image is on. If the image is popular enough to cause bandwidth stress, visitors will hit the paypal button. Taking an image and putting it on another site is theft, period.

Just saying.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:01 pm 7. Knucklehead:

TedM,

Ummm… do authors specifically grant special rights to libraries? In effect the result is very similar to “stealing” the book. The taxpayers pay for one copy and then many go in, take it, and read it. And what of book swapping? People are forever trading books back and forth. Many read for the price of one.

I wondered something similar to what Syl is asking. If what google is doing is grocking through tons and tons of scanned books and returning bits and pieces that match some sort of search criteria, how is this any different, as far as copyright goes, than Lexus-Nexus or a clipping of research service?

And, to Lindenen’s point, if searches turn up bits of books that people then buy, isn’t that a good thing?

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:06 pm 8. ahem:

I hate that business model, it’s bout as low as you can sink: ask forgiveness, not permission or, ‘it’s easier for us to shift the burden of opting out to you’. Screw ‘em.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:07 pm 9. Pat Curley:

“This all goes back to the arguments about music. Roger owns his books. It is his property. He has the right to decide what to do with it. No one in the world has a right to read Roger’s books.”

I most certainly do have a right to read Roger’s books; at least the ones which I have purchased, and others that I can borrow from the library.

Now, I agree that the books should not be downloadable, or even available for reading in their entirety. But there is a fair use exception which Google says it is complying with:

“Google said in a statement responding to the lawsuit that its activities are consistent with the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law.”

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:09 pm 10. Pat Curley:

“Ummm… do authors specifically grant special rights to libraries? In effect the result is very similar to “stealing” the book. The taxpayers pay for one copy and then many go in, take it, and read it.”

There is a key difference; in the case of libraries there is the purchase of the copy by the library. In addition, only one person can read the book at any one time, hence libraries may buy 20 copies or more of very popular books. Indeed, I suspect that many non-fiction books would not be profitable for the publishers were it not for library purchases.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:13 pm 11. TedM:

Oh my gosh. Where to start? I am not a lawyer. Most of the comments here should be answered by a lawyer who practices intellectual property law.

Pat, you purchased the right to read the book. In a book which I just pulled off the shelf it says, “Copyright xxx by xxx. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form”

As far as libraries are concerned, I don’t know the law, but when a publisher sells a book to a library it(the publisher) knows exactly what the library will do with it.

As far as “fair use” is concerned, courts will determine the facts.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:23 pm 12. TedM:

Oh my gosh. Where to start? I am not a lawyer. Most of the comments here should be answered by a lawyer who practices intellectual property law.

Pat, you purchased the right to read the book. In a book which I just pulled off the shelf it says, “Copyright xxx by xxx. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form”

As far as libraries are concerned, I don’t know the law, but when a publisher sells a book to a library it(the publisher) knows exactly what the library will do with it.

As far as “fair use” is concerned, courts will determine the facts.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:24 pm 13. Knucklehead:

Good answer, Ted!

There are further twists to this. For example anyone is free to quote even copyrighted material provided they give attribution. So, if what Google is doing returned some copyrighted material in response to some search along with proper attribution…

Even the expiration of copyrights is a complex matter.

I’m not defending Google here but I can’t imagine they’d just start scanning in libraries worth of books without running it past a copyright attorney. Anything is possible though.

If the Writer’s Guild can win their case or squeeze some compenstation out of Google, good for them.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:38 pm 14. erp:

As others have pointed out, scanning a book and making it available to readers is only different in convenience from libraries or book swapping among friends.

I don’t think authors or publishers can stop libraries from buying their intellectual property and making it available to their members. Neither do I think scanning can be stopped, so publishers must come up with a new way of working with the new technology.

As an avid reader, I’d love it if I could download a book into a specially designed device that would simulate reading a book. I’m amazed that after all this time there isn’t something on the market that would serve that purpose.

So much of the internet is cost free to the end user. I think that’s why it took off like a rocket. Now that we’ve all cooled down a little, we must look into how this gigantic cookie jar can be funded. End user payments can be part of the process, but it can’t be expected to shoulder the entire cost.

Sep 21, 2005 - 1:40 pm 15. Charlie (Colorado):

Okay, if you look at Google’s side of it, they’re scanning the books, but just returning scraps of a few lines that match the search terms, along with title, copyright and ISBN information.

Hard to see how this isn’t going to fit in ‘fair use” — and perhaps more important, it looks to me like it would be advantageous to the author, rather than the opposite.

ERP, the thing about Internet stuff is that ti’s actually so cheap it may be “too cheap to meter.” When a fairly high-load site can be set up for $20 a month, and a site like Glenn Reynolds can be run for a few hundred bucks a year, allocation of the thousanths of a mil per page view is going to be far more expensive than the cost of the page view itself.

Sep 21, 2005 - 2:13 pm 16. ajf:

Judging from the comments thus far, it appears that no one read the original linked article. (And since it mentioned the three individual plaintiffs I’ll assume Roger didn’t read it either given the update.)

Even the plaintiffs admit that the display of search results (the ends of Google’s efforts) is covered under Fair Use. They are claiming that the act of scanning the works is a violation of their copyright. They may have a point, though I wouldn’t bet on it.

Anyway, Google should just threaten to purge all of it’s databases of any and all works by the plaintiffs and references to said works unless the suit is dropped. That would be a hilarious!

Sep 21, 2005 - 2:13 pm 17. Knucklehead:

Ajf,

I plead guilty as charged

Charlie,

Interesting comment re: finding some way to charge. Tracking electronic usage and allocating charges is, of course, nothing new. The micro-accounting and charging is a problem that some darned bright people have been working on for a good while now with no particularly viable results. Exageration, perhaps, but it reminds me somewhat of how I heard some guy from MIT (on a PBS program MANY years ago, probably 30 or more) talking about how voice recognition was on the verge of perfecting and would be a common technology any moment. It is somewhat common, but hardly perfected and a long way from ubiquitous.

The micro-accounting issue is enormously difficult to solve. Think back to the days when telephone calls actually cost enough that people would routinely call the operator and have the charge removed when they dialed a wrong number. Then think what it would be like trying to manage all the incorrect or aborted electronic accesses using the web generates. We’d all spend our time contacting somebody to tell them, yeah, I went there but I didn’t mean to, didn’t read it, and take the $0.001 charge off my account! Those millidollars add up! A millidollar saved is a millidollar earned! Millidollar wise but penny foolish!

Sep 21, 2005 - 2:28 pm 18. ed:

Hmmmm.

“They are claiming that the act of scanning the works is a violation of their copyright. They may have a point, though I wouldn’t bet on it.”

They absolutely have a point, a case and will spank Google very very hard. And after they make Google squeal, they’ll hammer the crap out of those participating libraries.

Copyright law covers traditional and electronic media. If you photocopy a book, that is copyright infringement. If you scan a book, that is copyright infringement. If you photocopy a page or two, that is NOT copyright infringement. If you scan a page or two, that is NOT copyright infringement. Also If you look carefully at the first article you’ll see the weasel word “underlying principles of copyright law”. That’s shorthand for “please please please cover our ass”. I.e. their actions are not in accordance with US copyright law, but they hope some judge will buy the theory that it’s according to the “underlying principles”.

Will they potentially lose sales? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s their books, their work and it’s their choice. It is not Google’s choice to make on their behalf.

Sep 21, 2005 - 2:36 pm 19. Steven E. Ehrbar:

Google reads in copyrighted works, and then keeps the electronic copy in a database that no humans ever see. When somebody does a Google search, it pops up a small excerpt that is well within Fair Use guidelines, with information as to how the reader can get the full work on his own. Those who don’t want their works indexed can tell Google so, and it will exclude their works from the database.

Now, did I just describe Google Print, Google News, or the original Google web search (prior to the cache feature)?

Sep 21, 2005 - 2:47 pm 20. cestmoi:

Based on what Google has said and what the plaintiffs are claiming, I’d side with Google. Returning a short snippet isn’t infringing on the copyright. To return that snippet, Google has to scan the book so they can find the snippet. The service will be enormously useful. For example, who first said “Prediction is difficult, especially the future?” Ask Google and you get lots of contradictions. Ask Google Print and you might be able to figure it out.

Further, as others have pointed out, it’ll help the authors become more visible to possible customers. For example, look what iTunes has done for the music industry. You can now find tunes that there simply isn’t another way to find. Google Print may be an excerpting service but it does point to booksellers that might have the book.

The authors might reasonably insist on Google blocking 100s of accesses to the same book by the same ip address within some timeframe to prevent a hacker from stringing together the book from the snippets. But honestly Roger, can you really complain that a few sentences from one of your books is returned to somebody? Especially if that someone can’t electronically steal the entire book? It’s akin to saying a customer can’t open a book in a bookstore before buying it.

Sep 21, 2005 - 2:52 pm 21. Charlie (Colorado):

Knuck, all that stuff is correct … except that the problem for sites like instapundit is multiplied by a factor of a thousand: the cost to Glenn per view is not milli-cents, but micro-cents: 10^-10 dollars, or less.

Unless the micropayment scheme can be made effective and worthwhile at a scale of 0.0000001 cents, some other business model is going to have to be found.

I think, believe it or not, the advertising model is probably the most viable: then you’re making reasonably significant micro-payments (millipayments?) not by page views, but by the number of people of a targeted demographic you can deliver.

Sep 21, 2005 - 3:18 pm 22. Charlie (Colorado):

Okay, if you look at Google’s side of it, they’re scanning the books, but just returning scraps of a few lines that match the search terms, along with title, copyright and ISBN information.

Hard to see how this isn’t going to fit in ‘fair use” — and perhaps more important, it looks to me like it would be advantageous to the author, rather than the opposite.

ERP, the thing about Internet stuff is that ti’s actually so cheap it may be “too cheap to meter.” When a fairly high-load site can be set up for $20 a month, and a site like Glenn Reynolds can be run for a few hundred bucks a year, allocation of the thousanths of a mil per page view is going to be far more expensive than the cost of the page view itself.

Sep 21, 2005 - 3:27 pm 23. Charlie (Colorado):

Knuck, all that stuff is correct … except that the problem for sites like instapundit is multiplied by a factor of a thousand: the cost to Glenn per view is not milli-cents, but micro-cents: 10^-10 dollars, or less.

Unless the micropayment scheme can be made effective and worthwhile at a scale of 0.0000001 cents, some other business model is going to have to be found.

I think, believe it or not, the advertising model is probably the most viable: then you’re making reasonably significant micro-payments (millipayments?) not by page views, but by the number of people of a targeted demographic you can deliver.

Sep 21, 2005 - 3:28 pm 24. erp:

What’s the difference between libraries buying books and making them available to their members and Google buying books and making them available to their members in, what is really, just a different format.

Making it illegal to scan copyrighted books won’t solve the problem and neither will end user fees because of the complexities and difficulty of charging by mills.

A whole new approach to publishing must be devised, one that will protect intellectual property and provide the profits to publishers which will keep them in business. That’s where efforts should be going, not law suits to benefit only the lawyers.

Sep 21, 2005 - 3:40 pm 25. cestmoi:

Interesting take on the issue over at

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/09/authors_guild_suit_and_googles.html .

Sep 21, 2005 - 3:50 pm 26. shakespeare_101:

This is an amazing powerplay by Google. They are clearly aware of copyright law, so the question becomes what are they trying to do? All I can think is they are seeking a reformat of existing copyright law to an opt-out format. The market for this search engine would be enormous and seeking to quantify a database of information that is not already covered by Lexis (legal, news) is a savy move.

Full disclosure: I work for Lexis

Sep 21, 2005 - 4:16 pm 27. shakespeare_101:

This is an amazing powerplay by Google. They are clearly aware of copyright law, so the question becomes what are they trying to do? All I can think is they are seeking a reformat of existing copyright law to an opt-out format. The market for this search engine would be enormous and seeking to quantify a database of information that is not already covered by Lexis (legal, news) is a savy move.

Full disclosure: I work for Lexis

Sep 21, 2005 - 4:18 pm 28. shakespeare_101:

Sorry for the double post

Sep 21, 2005 - 4:20 pm 29. Charlie (Colorado):

Sorry for the double post.

Yeah, me too. I can’t figure out how I managed to double post two interleaved posts with an hour lag between the first and second, though….

Sep 21, 2005 - 4:36 pm 30. lindenen:

“Google reads in copyrighted works, and then keeps the electronic copy in a database that no humans ever see. When somebody does a Google search, it pops up a small excerpt that is well within Fair Use guidelines, with information as to how the reader can get the full work on his own.”

This sounds exactly like what Amazon.com has had on its site for awhile now.

Sep 21, 2005 - 5:50 pm 31. Patrick Tyson:

Once upon a time, before there was…

http://imdb.com/

I used to be considered pretty knowledgable regarding movies and movie history and what I didn’t know that my aquaintances (or theirs) would ask about I could usually find in the books I own.

http://imdb.com/

…is a great resource and I always advise aquaintances (who still ask me movie questions) to check it out.

If Google uses the materials as they say they will, they will be providing another great resource to this, The Information Age.

Sep 21, 2005 - 6:24 pm 32. Eric Akawie:

About 10 minutes after this goes live, someone will write a Greasemonkey script that turns the snippet into a link to buy the book on Amazon (if it’s in print.)

The next step should be for Google to partner with someone who will do on-demand printing for books that are out of print. Then any reasonable author would beg Google to scan their books and sign a standard contract for royalties from the on-demand printing. Some may even allow the scan to be sold directly as an e-book.

If I had a spare 50 million or so, I’d start the company myself.

As I think about it, there’s really virtually no reason to DRM books bought and downloaded this way – for anything out-of-print, Google’s going to be a much more efficient way to find and download a book than a peer-to-peer network.

Sep 21, 2005 - 6:42 pm 33. thibaud:

A different, non-lawyerly take on the issue: Google Print may lead us eventually to file-swapping of books, ie, to readers perusing not just snippets but huge chunks of, indeed entire, books online, for free. (Presumably, at some point entire books will be bit-torrent compressed as easily as music files, and laptop computer screens are becoming easier and easier on the eyes). If this occurs, then:

– will readers tend to chop up books into bite-sized parcels and discard the less juicy morsels, ie read books rapidly, partially and superficially, as book reviewers do?

– will the above morsels be stolen and shared and “re-mixed” the way house music DJs re-mix snippets of familiar pop/rock/rap melodies?

– as large publishers’ distribution and marketing clout begins to wane under the new decentralized, increasingly peer-to-peer distribution model, will there be fewer literary “blockbusters” and a huge rise in sales for books by lesser-known authors? (This is what is already starting to happen to Hollywood: blockbusters will be a thing of hte past, and all films will be indy films aimed at niches.)

– will authors increasingly view their writing projects less as titanic struggles over many years, instead dashing off more or less provisional, experimental drafts which are then distributed for feedback from readers as a prelude to many iterations? (Think of Dickens and his serialized novels appearing in magazines, and add the ability to revise and edit based on magazine sales…)

– far from destroying the value of actual physical books, will the trend toward online free distribution of partial, provisional, dynamic literary sketches actually increase the scarcity value and price of quality hardback books? Isn’t there something precious and deeply satisfying about the experience of holding a book in one’s hands, of opening each page and reading it leisurely and with love, and hefting it and placing it in its privileged spot on the shelf of that private garden known as the personal library? (Think aged Pomerol or Pauillac vs coca-cola.)

Sep 21, 2005 - 8:45 pm 34. thibaud:

A different, non-lawyerly take on the issue: Google Print may lead us eventually to file-swapping of books, ie, to readers perusing not just snippets but huge chunks of, indeed entire, books online, for free. (Presumably, at some point entire books will be bit-torrent compressed as easily as music files, and laptop computer screens are becoming easier and easier on the eyes). If this occurs, then:

– will readers tend to chop up books into bite-sized parcels and discard the less juicy morsels, ie read books rapidly, partially and superficially, as book reviewers do?

– will the above morsels be stolen and shared and “re-mixed” the way house music DJs re-mix snippets of familiar pop/rock/rap melodies?

– as large publishers’ distribution and marketing clout begins to wane under the new decentralized, increasingly peer-to-peer distribution model, will there be fewer literary “blockbusters” and a huge rise in sales for books by lesser-known authors? (This is what is already starting to happen to Hollywood: blockbusters will be a thing of hte past, and all films will be indy films aimed at niches.)

– will authors increasingly view their writing projects less as titanic struggles over many years, instead dashing off more or less provisional, experimental drafts which are then distributed for feedback from readers as a prelude to many iterations? (Think of Dickens and his serialized novels appearing in magazines, and add the ability to revise and edit based on magazine sales…)

– far from destroying the value of actual physical books, will the trend toward online free distribution of partial, provisional, dynamic literary sketches actually increase the scarcity value and price of quality hardback books? Isn’t there something precious and deeply satisfying about the experience of holding a book in one’s hands, of opening each page and reading it leisurely and with love, and hefting it and placing it in its privileged spot on the shelf of that private garden known as the personal library? (Think aged Pomerol or Pauillac vs coca-cola.)

Sep 21, 2005 - 8:46 pm 35. jill bryant:

I think the discussion is really how someone views the internet and google. If you think of them as an incredible reference tool (as I think someone else said, too), it makes perfect sense and seems like the natural next step. I am often looking for a book reference, lyric or poem and this would be very helpful. Chances are I would purchase the book or song and be interested in other works by that poet.

I do understand an author might feel strange about their work being posted without their permission – they might not like certain publications to review their books, or otherwise present their work. I do think this will be the norm in a very few sci fi years and authors might even ask to have them scanned sooner rather than later….but for now, it’s very new.

There is the question of how the search engines make their money here and I think Eric had some very interesting points but, that didn’t seem to be the point of the column so I’ll leave it at that….

Sep 21, 2005 - 8:50 pm 36. rml:

IIRC, Google originally replied to such complaints, saying that they were going to finesse the issue by only dealing with works out of copyright, a la Benjamin Books, and others by permission of the holders of copyright.

From the article, that seems to have changed.

Sep 21, 2005 - 9:05 pm 37. rml:

IIRC, Google originally replied to such complaints, saying that they were going to finesse the issue by only dealing with works out of copyright, a la Benjamin Books, and others by permission of the holders of copyright.

From the article, that seems to have changed.

Sep 21, 2005 - 9:10 pm 38. Pixy Misa:

I estimate the cost per view for Instapundit at around 3 millicents. That’s assuming he’s getting a good, but not amazing, deal on the hosting; so +/- 50%.

Instapundit has a pretty clean design; busier blogs with more graphics would cost correspondingly more to run.

Instapundit runs about 125KB for the main page plus a few KB for CSS, Javascript and images (which would be cached by frequent visitors). I used a bandwidth charge of 25 cents per GB. The cheapest I’ve seen is 11 cents per GB for single-homed bandwidth. (Cheaper in bulk, but we’re talking a single website here.) It runs up to several dollars per GB if you choose the wrong provider.

And that’s just the bandwidth cost, not counting any other factors.

So we’re not talking microcents just yet.

Sep 21, 2005 - 9:47 pm 39. Vexorg:

To try to get a better idea of what’s going on, I went to take a look at an example of what Google is returning for results here. Just for the irony involved, I chose as my test subject Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal This Book”. Through Google Print only the covers, title pages, introduction, index and an excerpt of the first chapter were available. Since one of the first links in the search results returned a webpage with the full text of the book, I took a string from later in the book and searched on that. No result was returned besides the full-text copy that the search text came from.

Using Amazon’s “Search inside” feature on the same book returned the same results as Google Print. When Amazon’s feature launched it was not without its share of controversy, but as far as I know, theirs is an opt-in system for which they get the permission of the copyright holders before excerpting the books. I don’t know what to think about this whole thing (although to be honest, I don’t particularly trust Google’s motives on anything right now) but I tend to think if that’s the extent of it, the fair use arguement might actually hold up.

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:06 pm 40. Vexorg:

To try to get a better idea of what’s going on, I went to take a look at an example of what Google is returning for results here. Just for the irony involved, I chose as my test subject Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal This Book”. Through Google Print only the covers, title pages, introduction, index and an excerpt of the first chapter were available. Since one of the first links in the search results returned a webpage with the full text of the book, I took a string from later in the book and searched on that. No result was returned besides the full-text copy that the search text came from.

Using Amazon’s “Search inside” feature on the same book returned the same results as Google Print. When Amazon’s feature launched it was not without its share of controversy, but as far as I know, theirs is an opt-in system for which they get the permission of the copyright holders before excerpting the books. I don’t know what to think about this whole thing (although to be honest, I don’t particularly trust Google’s motives on anything right now) but I tend to think if that’s the extent of it, the fair use arguement might actually hold up.

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:06 pm 41. Vexorg:

Ack, double post. might as well make that “Steal This Bandwidth.” Sorry.

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:07 pm 42. ed:

Hmmmm.

“Now, did I just describe Google Print, Google News, or the original Google web search (prior to the cache feature)?”

The problem with your argument is that when people publish works on the internet, there is an implicit allowed Fair Use that the publisher has agreed to. If the publisher has not agreed to it, then the publisher places the work behind a subscription firewall, which the NYT and other publishers have done.

There is no implicit Fair Use for Google’s purpose as the publishers have not agreed in any way, shape or form with the methods being applied by Google. Additionally there is a physical restriction placed on books that does not exist for webpages. I.e. all Google is doing with webpage searches is offer you an index to works that you had access to anyways *without* Google.

In this case Google is offering copyrighted work to you that you would *not* have access to without Google. This same standard would apply if Google started offering you selected text from works secured behind subscription firewalls.

One of the biggest issues surrounding the publication of electronic books is the scanning and conversion of existing printed works. The core argument made in previous lawsuits governing the electronic conversion of copyrighted printed works is that the copyrighted work was offered as a physical object to which a user, any user, could only have access on a one by one basis.

Then there’s the whole other issue of cross-border international copyright agreements and recipriocity.

link

Google might win it’s case, but it’ll have to argue that case in front of just about every single national jurisdiction on the planet. Either that or it’ll have to restrict specific works based on IP addresses or, somehow, national boundries. Failing that then Google would have to somehow convince 400+ countries on this planet to agree to a unified set of copyright laws, which I wouldn’t hold my breath for.

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:20 pm 43. Charlie (Colorado):

I think there’s some kind of site bug with the double posts. I can imagine a couple, but the business with my having two interleaved double posts with an hour between them just doesn’t fit — I don’t have an hour’s attention span.

Anyway, Pixy Misa, I don’t have the figures at hand but I used his sitemeter pages, the page size, and the hosting matters price sheet and I got something more like 0.00001 cents per page worst case.

In any case, though, whether you’re trying to process millicent or microcent events, managing to make those payments work and be financially feasible looks really unlikely.

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:24 pm 44. ed:

Hmmmm.

And there is another issue too and that is that some unscrupulous individual could, and would, write a spider that could suck out the entire copyrighted work.

As an example if I were to write such a program, to get this post let’s say, then I start with the very first phrase “And there is another issue too” do a Google Print search on that term along with the book title. I then get back the above paragraph and use the last part “the entire copyrighted work.”, along with the book title, to get the next set of data back which would be “As an example if”.

Even if I got back only 1 new word per search, I could rapidly scroll through the entire book and retrieve a full electronic copy, format it with a preset HTML/CSS layout and have a useful electronic copy.

How? HTML isn’t just for browsers. It’s text. Anyone who can program can write a program that manipulates text. If you can recieve and send TCP/IP packets, read and write to port 80 and parse text, then your program can spider through Google Print with relative ease.

And that’s if Google doesn’t offer you an easier method.

link

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:38 pm 45. ed:

Hmmmm.

And there is another issue too and that is that some unscrupulous individual could, and would, write a spider that could suck out the entire copyrighted work.

As an example if I were to write such a program, to get this post let’s say, then I start with the very first phrase “And there is another issue too” do a Google Print search on that term along with the book title. I then get back the above paragraph and use the last part “the entire copyrighted work.”, along with the book title, to get the next set of data back which would be “As an example if”.

Even if I got back only 1 new word per search, I could rapidly scroll through the entire book and retrieve a full electronic copy, format it with a preset HTML/CSS layout and have a useful electronic copy.

How? HTML isn’t just for browsers. It’s text. Anyone who can program can write a program that manipulates text. If you can recieve and send TCP/IP packets, read and write to port 80 and parse text, then your program can spider through Google Print with relative ease.

And that’s if Google doesn’t offer you an easier method.

link

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:40 pm 46. ed:

Hmmm.

Ok, I got bit too. Sorry for the double post.

Sep 21, 2005 - 10:41 pm 47. Charlie (Colorado):

Sorry for the double post.

Yeah, me too. I can’t figure out how I managed to double post two interleaved posts with an hour lag between the first and second, though….

Sep 21, 2005 - 11:04 pm 48. dsmtoday:

I do not like this attitude of authors and artists that come off as if copyright law is some unalienable right passed down by natural law. It is not. The Constitution grants Congress the power to set up copyright laws and regulations, but does not give much guidance in doing so. That means the ultimate power here still rests with the people. So you better do your best not to piss the people off.

Copyright laws are already obscenely stacked against the public to the point where there is no recent public domain any more. The entire 20th century is practically closed off. Just you wait, though. After the terror wars are through, all it will take is another stupid copyright power grab by Hollywood timed with the candidacy of someone willing to use the copyright issue to grab some headlines. And talk about your ready-made populist push-button issue. Not everyone is poor, not everyone is jobless, but just about everyone deals with copyright issues every day as an entertainment consumer.

And when this happens, it ain’t gonna be a simple pushback – no way. Just like Walmart, we will be Rollin’ Back Copyright Terms, right back to the 1800s.

So a warning to authors and artists – STFU about minor technical violations of your copyright that make the consumer’s life easier. You come off as an arrogant wanker out to spoil everybody else’s good time.

Don’t anger the people. You won’t like us when we are angry.

Sep 21, 2005 - 11:31 pm 49. Rev. Jay:

Not a regular commenter around here, just a normal reader. But I wanted to pop in for this one.

The problem with Copyright law and Intellectual Property rights is that they cover so many areas, what people might know about one specific area doesn’t necessarily cover a different but similar area. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve tried to keep up with this in the past few years (I’ve done publication work, so it has been important). This stuff, on the whole, is just a massive mess, and, due mostly to wisely chosen influence, it’s far too protective of copyright holders. But this isn’t to say the Author’s Guild is wrong, or that Google is right.

This whole mess comes down, mostly, to this: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;” Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution. Congress has the final say on what our copyright laws, but somehow they’ve been botching the job for about the past 20 years (though I’d guess it’s far longer than that). This is Bi-partisan bashing, too, and they’ve done a bad job of it. Our copyright laws need a pretty massive overhaul with a good deal of flexibility (or at least a note to look at these every few years).

However, this isn’t completely on-topic to the matter at hand. Google won’t win. It’ll only get worse for them if they keep pushing it up the Federal chain. The SCOTUS decisions in Disney and Grokster (I think those are the names) are pretty good indicators of how things are up at that level, even with the impending replacement of two justices.

The key point the case will hinge on is brought out in the ITworld.com link: “Still, Google is copying entire works into its database. “It’s not what’s delivered to the PC user that’s the copyright issue, it’s the fact that they have copied the entire work in the first place,” said Ross. “I don’t see fair use.”" It isn’t fair use, as they’re using a full copy of a copyrighted text, it doesn’t much matter if how much the end-user is seeing of it.

I think the idea is utterly brilliant and it would become a wonderful resource, but this isn’t going to fly. It’s sort of like someone using your land, and they argue that there wasn’t a “No Trespassers” sign posted, so they can setup shop there. Not actively persuing a copyright does not eliminate the underlying property rights. So I don’t see Google winning unless they get a really screwy set of judges (and don’t expect that every level). I’ll leave the way in which Google has acted for another time, but their attitude is starting to become serious issue. And, speaking of books, I have to wonder what Orwell would actually think about all this. The mind wanders about that question.

Before I finish, I just want to clear up some things from thibaud’s post.

- Bittorrent isn’t a compression technology. It’s a file transmission system (brilliant and, well, rather legal).

- Hanging around the “Undernet” enough over the years, I know that digital copies of books have existed since just about the time that Adobe’s Acrobat format took off. There are entire groups of people that trade electronic copies of books, and they’ve existed for years.

- Part of your assumption is that people aren’t consuming things as much as they used to, or in vastly different ways. This isn’t quite true. They’re just changing the locations of that consumption. Your reference to Hollywood is a bit off. Distribution has changed, not really how many people will see a film. The advent of the very nice $3-4,000 home “entertainment” system has shifted a lot of people out of the Theatres and into watching the movies at home. They receive just about the same quality of film experience but for less of a headache (or direct cost, actually).

A thread point.

- eBooks “readers” do exist, the problem has always been heat and comfort, actually. They aren’t fun to use, the batteries don’t last long, get really warm, and, mostly from low sales, are still rather expensive. I really want the technology to take off, but it’ll still be some time, if ever.

Sep 22, 2005 - 5:22 am 50. TedM:

As usual, a good thread on Roger’s site. How well this compares to the trash comments elsewhere.

Most of the comments were well put together and covered the issues. And everyone seemed to agree that there are complex legal issues which we are not competent to address.

The comments came down on the two sides of the issue which divide us politically. Individual rights versus group rights. I side with the owner of the property. Others seem to believe in one way or another that they have a right to someone else’s property. “Posted by: dsmtoday at 11:31 pm” is a prime example of that. Click on his name and you will be redirected to the NY Times and be able to read the Op Eds for FREE. He is unashamed to show us that he has made a passkey and can enter the Times back door and take their property. I know that he doesn’t consider himself a thief, but I do. He doesn’t want to pay the Times $50 a year to read the columns, so he just takes them for nothing. Well, we know what his price is. As the man said to the hooker, “We know what you are. The only question is the price?”

Dsmtoday isn’t alone. I know many educated, otherwise honest people, who are not poor, who believe that it is their right to copy music albums from the internet. They have the usual rationale. But it all boils down to getting something for nothing. Petty theft, so they convince themselves that they have some right to do it. If they don’t like the law, they just ignore it.

Sep 22, 2005 - 6:45 am 51. dsmtoday:

TedM, get off your high horse, “http://nytimes.com” is hardly a fancy pass key to the NYTIMES. Sheesus, you don’t even understand a simple URL, I wouldn’t expect you to understand what’s at stake with the Google case.

What you need to do is look at what possible “harm” Google is causing authors and artists. And frankly, I don’t understand the controversy. Authors should be kissing Google’s feet on this one, cause it is ultimately going to create more exposure and demand for their work once they are searchable. I hope Google prevails, but I am not counting on it.

Somewhere along the way, authors have gotten into their head that copyright is some property law written in stone by the Constitution. But it is not written in stone. Congress (and thus ultimately the people) has control over this law, and you need only look to the 1800s to see how short these copyright terms can be, and difficult to renew.

Copyright is a balancing act which should ultimately BENEFIT the public with more artistic output and a wealth of common culture upon which to draw. But already, we’ve seen the abuse going on in this scheme, where new copyright law is written which strips abilities from the consumer that they used to have only a few years ago. And the consumer is not really getting anything in return for this loss of capabilities.

I know what happens in politics when there is a backlash, and rarely is it pretty. That’s why I’m warning authors and artists that they better figure out ways to work with the consumer when new technologies arrive, instead of immediately phoning their lawyer or congressman. Their lobbying arms like the RIAA and MPAA will not be all powerful forever, and when they fall out of favor, the consumer will get his revenge for past wrongs.

Sep 22, 2005 - 7:27 am 52. cestmoi:

Ed – your spider could be thrawted by blocking an ip address that repeatedly requests bits of the same book. For that matter, a botnet could be thrawted if a particular book starts getting hammered by blocking all the associated ips. Or Google might ask you to answer a simple question before they return each result – a question that’s trivial for a human but difficult for a computer.

But suppose you somehow manage to bypass all the tripwires and you end up with a book. Now what? You might be able to sell a few copies undetected but if you try to use the Internet to advertise the fact that you have copies for sale, you’ll get caught.

You might argue that you can’t compete with free books. Had Steve Jobs agreed with you, we wouldn’t have iTunes. Last I heard, he’s sold over 1/2 billion songs. Had the music industry had their way, we wouldn’t have the plethora of iPods and other mp3 players out there because everybody copies their music from somewhere.

The argument against Google boils down to whether you think most people are honest or not. I assert that they are and give two examples:

Go into a Longs drugstore here in California, you’ll see goods crowding the sidewalk. The checkout stand is buried inside the store, out of sight of the goods. It’d be easy to skip the checkout and just take the goods. Sure some people probably steal from the drugstore but the net increase in sales is positive otherwise Longs wouldn’t continue stocking goods on the sidewalk. If people want your product, they will pay for it as long as the cost isn’t onerous.

Back in the 18th century, if you didn’t trust people then you wouldn’t bet, as Jefferson and Franklin did, that people could be trusted to rule themselves with the vote. Lot of smart folks were betting against that experiment. Seems to me that Jefferson and Franklin made the right bet – most people can be trusted.

Sep 22, 2005 - 7:56 am 53. Knucklehead:

TedM,

The comments came down on the two sides of the issue which divide us politically. Individual rights versus group rights. I side with the owner of the property. Others seem to believe in one way or another that they have a right to someone else’s property.

I don’t think this particular topic illuminates the fundamental two sides of an issue that divides us politically at all. It is far more complex than that.

Copyright and patent law, however, are pretty good topics for discussion re: “individual” vs. “group” rights. It is completely clear, I don’t see how an argument can even be raised otherwise, that copyrights and patents have, since the concepts were codified into laws and regulations long, long ago, been created specifically to register an “individual” right of “ownership” of “ideas” with the express intent that the right of ownership of the “ideas” will pass, upon some expiration of some time limit, to the “group”.

“Individual” rights, and even ownership of “property” are everywhere and in myriad ways subject to limitations in the interest of the “group”. And he concept of “fair use”, whether known by that name or another, are all around us. Zoning law and building codes place restrictions and requirements on the use of one’s individual property presumably for the good of the “group”. We cannot, at least not in all cases, use our private property however we see fit. And even when we use it within the limitations imposed we are subject to doing so according to minimum standards.

And he concept of “fair use”, whether known by that name or another, are all around us. Just to pick a simplistic example, consider the sidewalk running along the front of many parcels of suburban real-estate. An individual owns the property, and the sidewalk, but everyone and their sister has the right of way to use the sidewalk.

I’m too lazy to go look up a specific case, but there are plenty of cases where individual’s property has been subjected to “fair use” by “groups”. The example that jumps to mind is the one where some individual property owner has allowed, over some “long” period of time, his property to be used for some purpose; say kids passing through on their way to school. The property is then sold and becomes to another individual who wishes to stop having kids tramp through on their way to school. It has been well established that this new owner of this “individual” property may not now deny its “fair use” as a pathway for kids going to school. The use of some portion of the individual’s property has developed a “fair use” that the owner may not withdraw from the group.

It doesn’t matter whether any particular one, or portion, of us believe such laws to be unfair. They are the laws. And it is ONLY the law that protects and restricts property rights.

BTW, I don’t know that copyrights and/or patents fit a legalistic definition of “property”.

Sep 22, 2005 - 9:04 am 54. TedM:

Apologies to dsm. When I clicked on his link to the NYT and clicked on the op eds, I neglected to scroll down to see if the entire article was there. So I falsely accused him of being the culprit.

Knuck, you did a good job covering the issues.

Sep 22, 2005 - 10:46 am 55. Pixy Misa:

Anyway, Pixy Misa, I don’t have the figures at hand but I used his sitemeter pages, the page size, and the hosting matters price sheet and I got something more like 0.00001 cents per page worst case.

Hosting Matters runs about $1 per GB (between 50 cents and $1.30, depending on the plan).

At around 140-150KB total, we’re talking about 7000 pages per GB, so between 7 and 13 millicents per page.

(If he’s using gzip compression, cut those numbers in half.)

Sep 22, 2005 - 6:32 pm 56. Pixy Misa:

Oh yes – Instapundit does more traffic than any of the standard Hosting Matters plans allow for. So they must have done some sort of special deal for him.

Sep 22, 2005 - 6:33 pm

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