Google Book Settlement Off For Now... May Be Renegotiated

from the reading-the-unscanned-tea-leaves dept

Tue, Sep 22nd 2009 6:58pm — Mike Masnick

With so much opposition from pretty much everyone about the "settlement" between Google and authors/publishers' representatives, it looks like the parties are looking to renegotiate the deal. It wasn't too hard to read the tea leaves on this: there was so much vocal opposition -- including from the US gov't -- that it seemed unlikely that the settlement would ever get approved. My question, though, is what would a better settlement look like? I'm still of the opinion that no settlement should be needed, and that Google has a strong case that what's it's done is protected fair use. However, it appears that Google no longer wants to fight that battle, so we'll see some other settlement (probably involving Google coughing up more money and granting more restrictions), and we'll go through this whole argument again.

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Filed Under: book scanning, copyright, settlement
Companies: google

13 Comments

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Copyright Lawyer Pittsburgh, 22 Sep 2009 @ 7:30pm

Fairness Hearing
It's surprising the parties aren't waiting until the October 7th fairness hearing that was set by the federal court hearing the case.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Sep 2009 @ 8:24pm

Competitors
...Google has a strong case that what's it's done is protected fair use. However, it appears that Google no longer wants to fight that battle...

Duh, well of course not! A fair use ruling would leave the door open to competitors.
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- hegemon13, 23 Sep 2009 @ 9:56am
  
  Re: Competitors
  You morons just don't stop. The DOOR IS STILL OPEN TO ANYONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO FIGHT THAT BATTLE. There is nothing anti-competitive in the settlement.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 23 Sep 2009 @ 2:44pm
    
    Re: Re: Competitors
    When hegemon13 supports it, you know it's got to be bad.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Sep 2009 @ 8:27pm

In the future people will call this era the "Lost Century" because all knowledge was locked away by copyright and people couldn't use it and had to reinvent the public domain LoL
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- captn trips, 22 Sep 2009 @ 9:06pm
  
  RE: requiem of our epoh
  I think about that every day. I think perhaps this period will be referred to in the history of the world as the corporate era. It will be likened to the dark ages. A time when corruption and oppression are tolerated as normal parts of society as long as its effects are oblivious and only noted through the goods, services and most importantly information that we never had a chance to miss. A time when petty power mongers acquire vast portfolios of intellectual property and leverage it to acquire more monopolies and even political leadership. When countries like Brazil imprison their own citizens in the shadow of US interests.
  
  The only difference between the corporate era and the dark ages is that rather than the ultra powerful church oppressing citizens, we now face the mega corporations and IP juggernauts of the last century. They spread corruption around the globe, forcing the poorest nations into patent and copyright treaties through bribery of a straw man governments. Which ultimately result in an egregious violation of human rights... through absence of devices that could have saved millions of lives that never were.
  
  - this saddens me.
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  - Hephaestus (profile), 23 Sep 2009 @ 7:58am
    
    Re: RE: requiem of our epoh
    Two things
    
    First ???? EPOH - (Expert Panel on Health) ... or ...
    Epoch - a period marked by distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event
    
    Second - Over the past 500 years we have seen bubbles occur in multiple industries, tulips, dot com, internet, housing, etc. One thing about bubbles is they always break. There are two forms of bubbles speculative and monopolistic. The IP bubble we are now seeing is monopolistic and being artificially maintained by changes to the law. As we all know these changes were lobbied for and implemented to protect media industries, record, movie, and soon the newspapers.
    
    Currently there are about half a dozen technologies on the horizon that will be very disruptive to the media industries.
    
    - For Movies and TV its virtual sets and GPU's. When all you need is a sound stage (garage, gym, warehouse,etc) with blue/green screen and can create any set via 3d modeling software. The cost of production drops dramatically. If you have ever seen the show 'Sanctuary' on the SciFi (SyFy) channel or the movies '300' or 'Sin City' you have seen virtual sets.
    
    - For music its USB mixing boards, sound software and a studio mic.
    
    - For news papers its Craigslist, Google ads, Blogs, and orgs like NPR.
    
    For all of these the distribution method is the internet. The things that are needed to get the ball rolling is a collaboration tool, accounting tool, billing tool, and set of standards to pull it all together.
    
    do not be sad captn trips for the barbarians are at the gate ... and soon the walls of the castle shall fall ... a new city and new kings shall emerge from the ashes ...
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    - Captn trips, 23 Sep 2009 @ 1:15pm
      
      Re: Re: RE: requiem of our epo*ch
      mmm it seems like it only goes in one direction, I cant find an instance in the history of IP where it became less restrictive? I mean I like the theory that were currently in the empire strikes back , and the Ewoks' are on their way.
      
      The trends seem more akin to 1984 :)
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Sep 2009 @ 8:29pm

Competitors
"Duh, well of course not! A fair use ruling would leave the door open to competitors."

Competitors are bad again why?
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blue7053, 22 Sep 2009 @ 10:37pm

Google's books
I asked the librarian for the 'non-fiction' section. She didn't look up. She just reached under the counter and handed me the telephone book.
The largest new-construction in this town is the new library. The math section consists of six high school and grade school math books. The non- fiction section is 80% empty.

FORTY PERCENT OF THIS POPULATION IS FUNCTIONALLY ILLITERATE! WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT SOME BOOKS?
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- Anonymous Coward, 23 Sep 2009 @ 4:25am
  
  Re: Google's books
  MOVE!
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Yeah right, 23 Sep 2009 @ 8:10am

Settlement or no settlement, Google plans to charge big time for its book scanning. They aren't a charity, they want profit.

Nothing wrong with that per se, but have a look at the terms of their "Public Access Service". What a laugh: one (1!) terminal access from each public library building in the US. And users won't even be able to copy/paste or annotate anything, not even a blasted snippet. Not even from public domain books. How's that for fair use?
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Nick Novitski, 23 Sep 2009 @ 11:37am

What a better settlement looks like
In these kinds of cases, the optimum settlement is one where the plaintiffs have received the highest award they possibly could have. They will keep "renegotiating" as many times as they are permitted, until they reach that limit.
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