Comments on: We Must Stop Google Books Because It Will Work!!!

By: Copyright orphanage « TechnoLlama

[...] efforts with something as crass as a private agreement, or as James Boyle eloquently puts, “We Must Stop Google Books Because It Will Work!!!“. The Commission has issued the following statement with regards to orphan works in their [...]

By: Alban

Alban — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:33:19 +0000

Isn’t it funny that the publishers who fight Google’s idea would not put their books online themselves? They could do the same as Google does, making all their books not available in print anymore searchable. Anyone interested could then buy an e-book of the text he searched. Or are there publishers who do that already? Strange world.

By: links for 2009-09-09 : Bibliothekarisch.de

links for 2009-09-09 : Bibliothekarisch.de — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:08:52 +0000

[...] We Must Stop Google Books Because It Will Work!!! | The Public Domain | There are good reasons to worry about the Google Book Search Settlement, as I explained at length here. But of all of the reasons to oppose it, this surreal statement is my favourite. [...]

By: Google Book Settlement News 9/9/09 «

Google Book Settlement News 9/9/09 « — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:03:48 +0000

[...] to report. Arstechnica is covering the European Commission’s hearings on the settlement. ThePublicDomain.org argues that the settlement will unlock cultural heritage. Gavin Baker at Open Access News has two [...]

By: James Boyle

James Boyle — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:11:50 +0000

Thanks — I agree in large part. I know they have been lobbied, but since Google Books commercial services wouldn’t be available in Germany, I think the concern of the publishers is overblown — particularly since they could have opted out if they wished. (Now they have to opt in.) Speaking as a European, I agree they shouldn’t “trust” American companies (or any companies or any governments) with the public good. But its another thing to let that lack of trust blind one to the positive effects on the public good that a particular initiative — private or public — can have. And that seems to be what happened here. (The European digitization initiative, for example, can only benefit in terms of resources and funding and speed of operation from competition with Google — just as the public attempt to sequence the human genome picked up speed dramatically when it had to deal with competition from the private Celera led initiative. And Google’s project promises to have much more positive civic effects than Celera’s, IMHO.)

By: Joscha

Joscha — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:43:23 +0000

@Janek: The German government has been lobbied very hard by publishers during the last few months. They really want to stop Google Books from flooding the market with cheap eBooks, because they are worried that it will cannibalize their print sales, and take away their control over the market.
Google would become a giant competitor to the existing publishers, with titles that technically do not belong to Google, even though the publishers do not intend to republish them.

On the other hand, Europeans do not trust American companies with defending the common good, even though their own efforts at digitizing stuff are probably as doomed as the European subsidized search engines.

By: James Boyle

James Boyle — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:33:32 +0000

Thanks for the comment. You could be right and I hope you are. But as you note, the French and German actions hardly augur well…..

By: Janek mann

Janek mann — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:08:49 +0000

I believe you are reading a bit much into the statements attributed to the EU parties here… To me they parse as “we must make sure that similar systems can operate in the EU” not “google books must be stopped”. Hopefully that is not just wishful thinking on my part.

The efforts of the German and French governments are certainly misguided though no doubt with the best intentions… “oh no! The copyright of some of our most powerful companies (Bertelsmann, Vivendi) are going to be impacted without their prior say”
I do find the spectacle of the German government becoming involved in US legal proceedings a bit unseemly… Bertelsmann can certainly afford to seek their own representation.