French publishers to Google….”Non”

According to an article in Bookseller.com, three major French publishers are filing lawsuits against Google for the illegal scanning of their catalogue.

The action comes after extended efforts on the publisher’s part to stop the scanning:

In 2006, Gallimard was the first French publisher to demand that Google withdraw its titles from the US firm’s database. After a pause of six months, Google resumed scanning Gallimard titles and has continued ever since: “We have asked Google for a complete list of our titles it has scanned so far, but have had no reply,” Amor said.

French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand will discuss the issue during a planned trip to Google’s California headquarters in July.

He’s not the first French politician to take on Google.  President Sarkozy reacted negatively to GBS 2.0 in December, stating he would block Google from digitizing “France’s heritage.”

The Cost of Arrogance

In last weekend’s Philly.com, John Timpane takes a local look at the ongoing GBS saga.  While acknowledging the benefits of a digital library – along with some dangers – the piece takes a close and cautionary look at what the proposed settlement could mean for authors and other copyright holders.

Timpane includes commentary from Swarthmore poet, Daniel Hoffman, who was party to the 2005 lawsuit against Google.  In an earlier opinion piece, the poet wrote that if Google becomes:

“The repository of the accumulated knowledge and literature of all civilization, won’t the firm attract many more advertisers? We authors, whose work can be read and, in many cases, reproduced by the touch of a key, won’t see five cents of this income. And to the extent that that income is based on illegal appropriation of our writings, neither should Google.”

Further on in the article, James Grimmelmann, associate professor at the New York Law School, highlights just how broad reaching the proposal is:

“This reverses the default of prior law,” Grimmelmann said. Usually, the publisher must seek out copyright holders and secure permission before publishing. “Some people are afraid that under such an agreement, no copyright is safe.”

While the practice of unilaterally rewriting copyright law would be galling for most companies, according to a recent Gawker article titled Six Delusions of Google’s Arrogant Leaders, this type if activity is increasingly par for the course with Google.

The Search Elephant in the Room

Comments in this weekend’s San Jose Mercury News by the head of Google’s book search program put an end to all the high falutin’ statements that the effort is about creating the next digital Library of Alexandria.

“Obviously, we think there is value in search,” Dan Clancy, the Google executive in charge of Book Search, said, “but I think to the extent that any (competitors) feel similarly, they can invest, similarly as we have, in digitalizing books.”

Nice idea Mr. Clancy, except of course, they can’t.  That is the exact issue raised by Google’s competitors.  Google chose to flout copyright law and illegally begin scanning the works of authors.  When caught, they used the legal system as a tool to bypass the legislative process and carve out an exclusive right for digitized books.  Hardly the type of “do no evil” activities we’d like to encourage from others.

In his February 18 testimony before Judge Chin, Andew DeVore an attorney representing folk singer Arlo Guthrie and “Pay it Forward” writer Catherine Ryan Hyde, explored the search issue:

Second, your Honor, this agreement unfairly strips authors of control over and compensation for nondisplay uses of their works.  This, I submit, your Honor, is the elephant in the living room with regard to this case and what the case is really about for Google.  Google admits that this vast database of books is of enormous value for search and its continued dominance in the search market.

Google engineer Dan Clancy has said, “Google’s core business is search and find, so obviously what helps improve Google’s search engine is good for Google.”  Yet this agreement would give Google unfettered, perpetual rights to exploit and profit from nondisplay uses of authors’ works.

Your Honor, we don’t even know what those uses are. They’re undisclosed, they’re unknown, they’re unexamined in discovery by any party, by the Court, or by any author that the settlement agreement would be imposed on around the world. … Yet this agreement would deprive authors of any meaningful right to control or receive any compensation for all such uses and force them to release any claim relating to those uses.

Not surprisingly, improving the bottom line was not a highlight of Sergey Brin’s NYT Op-Ed defending the settlement. And no one can really blame him for that.  Creating a library sounds a lot better than improving the delivery of targeted advertising.

The Department of Justice gets it though.  In their February 4 filing with Judge Chin, the government’s attorneys concluded that:

This outcome has not been achieved by a technological advance in search or by operation of normal market forces; rather, it is the direct product of scanning millions of books without the copyright holders’ consent.

We’re happy to see that the truth is catching on.

When Google Attacks

Renowned artist Asaf Hanuka produced a creative and thought provoking piece of art to accompany a thoughtful article in California Lawyer magazine on Google’s increasingly disturbing behavior.

(credit: Asaf Hanuka)

Hanuka chose to depict an epic battle between a voracious Google monster and heroic authors attempting to fight of its rampage.  With an appetite for 1,000 pages an hour we think he just about nailed it.

In the accompanying article Tom McNichol describes the spectacular chain of events that have brought consumer advocates, privacy watchdogs and the U.S. government together in opposition to the growing Google monster.

OBA’s own Gary Reback receives a prominent place in the article noting:

“At least with [the old] Microsoft, you knew where you stood because they were candid about their goals,” Reback reflects. “They thought it was their God-given right to do what they wanted to do, and you could engage the adversary on that basis. But with Google, they really seem to believe that they’re good guys, and that’s how they present themselves.”

McNichol also explores the exceptional audacity and growth of the settlement’s objectives:

To critics, the settlement effectively locked in the ground rules for the emerging digital books market, to Google’s considerable advantage. What initially appeared to be a class action settlement involving a set of aggrieved rights holders became a privately negotiated compulsory license designed to monetize millions of out-of-print works.

The article should be required reading for anyone interested in a succinct overview of the issue. And, as for Hanuka’s Google monster, we plan to frame a copy for our desk to remind us of just what we’re up against.

Sustained Scanning

McMaster University Book Operations Manager Mark Leslie published a thoughtful recap of the ongoing GBS issue in The Mark.

Leslie, an author himself, sums up the opinions of many authors as they wait to hear from Judge Chin.

So, as the back and forth debates continue over the possibility of a single corporate entity gaining a potential monopoly in digitized literature, authors, publishers, and creators continue to watch with baited breath, as confused about what it all means as ever.

What might be even more surprising for those authors waiting and hoping for a ruling that will protect their copyrighted work is that Google continues to scan their books even at this time.

As Google’s personal library continues to grow at more than 1,000 pages an hour, we can all agree that Judge Chin’s forthcoming ruling will be the literary event of the year.