Google Books plans slammed

Google books provide an excellent framework for readers to get the info efficiently. It helps readers oversea to access the books in another small library without taking airplane and without transporting by sea by burning bunker. Please think that how many trees to be cut to address the publish requirement. 24 frees are needed to be cut to make to publish some 2000 books. Can we say publisher are the very driver of deforestation? Besides, without physical books, wooden shelves are not required. Now people should focus on how to create the mechanism to protect writers' interest under the umbrella of patent law. Pls keep in mind we readers would like to pay the book fees once it worths of reading.

Lee Deforest (inventor of the vacuum triode) heirs would have an absolute lock on all electronics for a few more years; possibly even to the extent of suppressing transistors. Patent and copyright is "for a limited time" to benefit the larger society.

Life of author plus 75 years is just too long, and has *recently* been changed by vested interests BUYING politicians. Its ex post facto statute. And Im sure that when the current limit becomes inconvenient, the ever more cheaply bought politicians will just increase it.

If google were to do nothing more than publish the works of the ancient greeks, and the catalogues of the major university presses, and the Dover books catalogue then it would have covered 90% of what is actually worth reading.

Leave the millions of books published by commercial houses on the retail shelves: 99% of that stuff is either crap or rehashes of the original, valuable, original work.

There are books out there that were printed in a single edition 80 yrs ago and forgotten. In some cases the author is untraceable. By law these books are under copyright and cannot be printed without the owner's permission until 75yrs after the author's death. Now define 75yrs after death of an unknown author. What is that on the calendar?

There are works that were published once and forgotten as the author is happily continuing to work and earning royalties on later works that publishers continue to buy.

We have companies like Disney Corp. that put the work in the vault and promise that no one will be able to obtain a new copy for 20 or 30 years when the company is ready to rerelease the work in a new limited edition. In these cases the copyright period intended to make sure the creator is given a fair chance to profit is a bit shorter. only 100yrs.

There are 3 major categories of works out there.

1)True orphan works, meaning the owner is untraceable. It is illegal to reissue these for any reason until 75yrs after an unknown date of death. There will be some instances where the date of death of the author is known, but a record of ownership exists that references a dead company. When does that one expire?

2) Forgotten works. For some reason these works were once published and have been shelved never to be seen again. The author is traceable and may even want to see the work in print again, but believes that convincing a publisher or self publishing is not worth the effort. These authors would appreciate seeing royalty payments from Google or other commercial publishing efforts. Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg do not pay royalties, so this group of authors may not give up the rights for books that may still have a market if a publisher can be found.

Then there are authors/rightsholders who deliberately withhold permission to publish to prevent that work from competing with other works. Disney is in this group.

Finally there are rightsholders who have made sure that the copyright notice is correct and complete enough to contact them or that the copyright has been properly registered and has up to date contact info. This class of rightsowner will have no problem. Google is free to say "We have this work on file". Beyond that they will need to get permission from the rightsholder. Many books come up with no further information available.

@Tony
If you have kept your contact info with the copyright office up to date, then the only question is "do you accept the terms offered or say you do not like the terms offered" You can make a counter offer until terms you like are offered or simply tell them to go to hell and tell them they do not have permission to publish your book or release any information about your work that might lead a reader to buy a copy from their local bookstore. As long as the rightsholder can be located, they are the owner.

Finally
The nasty part comes in the hard to find owner category. What is the definition of "Due Diligence" when tracking down a rightsowner who's contact information is incorrect and does not offer enough info to locate them?

Remember under current copyright law, the ABSENCE of a copyright notice means that the work is protected by copyright. Only if there is a notice explicitly limiting copyright protection can a work be used without the owner's permission. It is this part of the law that Google is challenging. Whether they get it by having a court say the ADA is acceptable or by having Congress amend the copyright law one more time is irrelevant. The relevant part is honoring the intent of the original copyright laws. Remember in the 1700s the British government SHORTENED the term of copyright due to publishers actions similar to what is happening in US today.

I really feel sorry for Google. I know why they're doing this - I have the same 'humanity enabler' instincts.

There are innumerable peoples' life works out there that are going to rot and die because the person capable of saying 'yes' rotted and died, just so the people alive, who value their work so much that you *can't find them*, can
hold the dead silent, and then hide in that silence themselves, or more typically just get more money for themselves. However moneyseekers can usually be found pretty easily at the end of a moneytrail, so the problem is mainly the living dead.

It's one of those humans vs humanity things that I don't think Google can win. The living who want to be dead have louder voices than the dead who want to be alive. I think they should set up the registry and contact all authors (or their authorised pseudonyms) *now* so that in 50-70 years time the will of the dead *and* the living will be known.

Regarding the 'anyone can oublish my work by not looking for me'. Can't you just sue them out of existance, or declare 'I am here' at the registry, or 'I am not here, and neither will my work be until I say otherwise' at the registry. This doesn't seem particularly difficult.

I looked up evil in the dictionary and it said "See Google."

Google is planning on publishing books that it cant find the copyright owners of unless they come along and say no.
So what they are saying is that they will ignore a law that says you cant publish my book without my permission unless I expressly say no again.
And if I found out that they've already published it I can then pay to join an organisation to get the royalties back.
SO if they sell a copy of my modern equivalent of the Lindisfarne Bible and then offer me the same royalties as Dan Brown gets for his ordure we're all going to be happy are we?
And presumably once the prescedent is set any muppet can steal my work cos they can be arsed to trace the owner.
You can kiss any value 'limited editions' and small publishers goodbye if this is allowed to stand.

"In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years.", this is from the Wikipedia article on copyright.

This means finding whoever has the copyright might be close to impossible for alot of works. So an opt-in solution will make it impossible for Google to add alot of old books.

To my knowledge, Google is only going to make the works searchable and provide excerpts. And for this copyright owners can opt-in for royalties from Google.

I really don't see any big problems with this as long as others are allowed to do this as well.

Sounds to me like "some other" companies don't want to do this themselves due to the effort it involves, but they are terrified of Google doing this.

100%. Google can ask for permission and pay for content like any other provider.

Why is a 3 minute song that can be sung by 100 people on youtube, worthy of a million-dollar fine if it's distributed without permission, and Google thinks they can copy any book they choose on their own terms? Books that take months to write, and hours and hours over the course of several days to read? That's REAL content.

If anyone wants to read a book for free, go to the library. They (or someone who donated it) paid for that copy.