Well, we
knew this was coming: Amazon's trying to convince a federal judge to block the $125m settlement that'll let Google Books make out-of-print works available online. According to Amazon's newly-filed brief, allowing the settlement will essentially force copyright holders into allowing Google to scan in and sell their works whether they want to or not -- a thorny area of the law Amazon's gotten pretty familiar with as it builds out the Kindle library. Of course, since the actual settlement is between Google and those very same authors and publishers, it certainly seems like Amazon is crying crocodile tears here -- according to our
old friend Paul Aiken of the Authors Guild, "Amazon apparently fears Google could upend its plans" to make the Kindle the dominant ebook platform. Heady stuff -- and with more briefs against the settlement due in the next few days from heavy hitters like
Sony, Yahoo and Microsoft, things seem like they're building to fever pitch. We'll keep you updated.
Read - USA Today
Read - CNET
Read - Amazon's brief [Warning: PDF]
posted September 3rd 2009 12:12PM
single Female Lawyer
fighting For Her Clients
wearing Sexy Mini Skirts
and Being Self-Reliant
HAHAHA.....Ooohh Futurama....how I miss thee...
@schmitty338: It's coming back next June. Original voice actors and everything.
find me pictures of said rady and i rove you rong time
Amazon to FCC: If you let Google have this then... /wrists
Wait, so random third parties can come in and contest other people's settlements? Sweet, I'm gonna go around and contest any I can find, just to bust some chops.
Mark, the problem with it is the settlement basically means....
If you don't claim your rights by 5-1-2010, that means Google have the absolute right of your book's digital copy.
Translate:
You want on a long holiday, then discover that I live in your by force for a year. I become the lawful owner of your house... How is that fair to the publishers.
@Kit: Huh? Amazon isn't a publisher. The people who are publishers are the ones who agreed to the settlement. What are you talking about?
Obviously, it's all about the $ and the dominance of Amazon's own book store.
Anyway, maybe the "political correctness" is different on the internet.
Even it's nothing related to Amazon, forcing publishers to give their rights to Google unless they declare is totally nonsense.
Lawyers, what a waste of money in our society.
I don't like you either.
@Niley Patel If you were a lawyer then I think you'd been more proactive with your lame joke right there.
Something like, "Hurt feelings from a comment on Engadget?! Contact me, Niley Patel for a free consultation. Cause internet trolls don't need to be fed!"
@Waffle Slayer: Nilay's joke was better than yours.
Waffle Slayer just doesn't understand the subtleties of Internet humor.
What you don't know is Nilay will probably play a bad ass guitar solo in the middle of an intense murder trial.
Didn't Nilay quit bein' a lawyer?
@skulldriveshaft : You can take the tiger out of the jungle ...
I hope Google can continue as there are many books i want that are out of print
I hope the judge slaps Amazon around on this very swiftly and tells them to STFU.
It really is a shame that a lot of books are only available in e-book form if you go with the Kindle format from Amazon. Unlike with iPods, where you can easily obtain virtually any song outside of iTunes for non-ipod players, the same cannot be said for books if you want to get a copy of a Kindle-only release for your Sony e-Reader or any other companies e-readers for that matter.
GOOG gets more content for essentially free. Ooooops? Your book out of print? Belongs to GOOG now, you looser.
This is very different from Amazon and the Kindle where the publisher sets prices and makes the decision whether to publish or not on that device.
This settlement takes the decisions to publish out of the author or publishers hands and just gives it all away to GOOG for a one time flat fee, AFAICT.
lian996: You know you can get ebooks for devices other than the kindle from other providers, right? Amazon has built a great device and service around the Kindle. It's not their fault Sony and others were not bright enough to figure out how to do the reader right. However, virtually every title Amazon has can be found from other services for other readers.
The difference between Amazon and Google: Amazon sells books for a profit. Google provides books for free. I will take Google's side, even if they cheat the Author's Guild or whoever these crooks are (which most guilds are, anyway).
"GOOG gets more content for essentially free. Ooooops? Your book out of print? Belongs to GOOG now, you looser."
You fail at grasping the situation.
Google does NOT get the books free, it costs them money to digitize them, store them, and serve them up to the public for FREE. And you're really on the publisher's side who take out of print books and sell them to you for full price, keeping ALL of the profits? It's no wonder publishers are against it, especially Amazon. They don't have to pay the author, it's pure profit!
In this age where certain goods can be duplicated at no cost, why shouldn't anyone (including Google) be free to redistribute out of print material that the author isn't getting paid for anyway?
"It's not their fault Sony and others were not bright enough to figure out how to do the reader right."
Moot point since this is purely a personal preference. I actually prefer Sony's reader over Amazon's. The wireless download feature is neat, but not a big draw for me. More important is how easy it is to copy my material to and from the device, using standard file formats. With the Kindle it's all bass ackwards.
@Ian
The issue was Google wanting to go through the public library with their library card and start scanning/OCR books to include in searches. Once they got 10-20 years out publishers on the cover stopped being available to contact... so they went ahead and scanned the book anyway until the "guild" sued them "on behalf of members names you don't know..."
Some publishers gave Google permission to their books under terms that only a few pages of the book could be read per search. That left a bunch of self-published and dead publisher's book out there. When the guild sued for "missing" authors Google couldn't contact, they fell in to the trap as they didn't know where the authors were either. So Google essentially demanded RAND access to any of the Writer's guild books (as the guild claimed non-contactable authors were probably guild members the guild should be representing) and Google paid a bunch of money to the guild directly...
Amazon is upset because Google has "settled up" with everybody important, and most importantly dealt with it's legal obligations.. now they can grab anything they can scrounge and scan it for Google search and it's the author's job to contact their publisher/guild to make arrangements... not Google's job to track them all down. Just like ASCAP/BMI for songwriters. Of course Google is first mover, so the next guy that wants a deal will have to wait in line for a year so the guild can see if they should charge MORE money!!!!
like i said
HATERRRRZZZZ
Fact is, the Author's Guild actually only has about 8000 members, and that membership includes agents and lawyers in the publishing industry. Google making a deal with the Authors Guild to carve up the entire universe of written material is about the same as Google making a deal with Hertz Gold Club to decide what price everyone is going to pay for every new or used car - whether they're a member or not! Okay, maybe not the best analogy, but you get my point - the Author's Guild is but one small organization that has as its membership a statistically insignificant number of authors. They are in no position to settle anything for anyone.
This so-called class action settlement is really just an abuse of the legal system, and an attempt by a huge corporation to establish a monopoly by getting a really small organization to go along with it, providing a fig leaf in exchange for a huge sum of money.
Because google will rule the world by offering out of print texts, right?
it's no different than ASCAP or BMI demanding royalties for EVERYTHING played in public (birthday parties, concerts, elevator music, etc) whether the artist is yourself or even part of their organization. The court accepted the Guild's argument they should represent the writers and Google jumped at the chance to only open their wallet once.
find it odd how many people hate this settlement, it means more freely available books that were unavailable for purchase. If publishers don't want to redistribute/republish a work, why are people so concerned about the publishers losing money? How am I supposed to buy that book to give that author money for writing it if it's no longer in print? It doesn't happen, so Google said, ok, let's just make these freely available. I don't see a problem, especially since the people crying foul are all companies in competition, Amazon being especially bad since they are basically the walmart of online stores.
nick: just because a book is out of copyright doesn't mean it's out of print.
whoops, it's me that got confused here, not you. I thought this was out of copyright, not print. mea culpa.
I think people really need to take a look at other articles that are circulating about this. There is a very good article on the BBC news site, that pretty well sums up the arguments against Google. Personally, I'd have to agree that Google is trying to create their own personal loophole against authors' copyright.
Google is just dealing with "abandon-books". They wanted a way to get credit similar to BMI or ASCAP... you find something you want to "perform", fill out the form and THEY search for the owner. If they find an owner with current publishing you might have a special license.. but if it's got no owner on record you get a standard fee for your performance and legally you're good for the rented performance rights.
The the whole thing is about "convenience to the court" in that Google will mail the publisher's address in the book and if they have an agreement pay them.. if not, Google will register the book and pay the guild. The courts like to see Google paying SOMEBODY for rights, and it's unreasonable and wasteful of court resources for a rights holder of an abandon book of 30 years to sue for "1 million dollars" when they have no contact info on file or their publisher went out of business 25 years ago.
Could Nilay or anyone else explain why Google cannot legally scan in books for which copyright as expired? What is the point of copyright expiring otherwise?
It's not for books with expired copyrights, it's books that are out of print but still under copyright. The deal says Google can scan those in and that authors will get a cut of sales -- Amazon's worried that this will lead to Google dominating the market.
Nilay: Any chance you can explain why Amazon has the right to do this? It seems odd that a 3rd party(although one with an interest in the outcome) that wasn't involved in a lawsuit can contest the settlement from that suit.
Oh, it happens all the time -- anyone can file a "friend of the court" brief in almost any case, and in cases with potentially huge outcomes there are tons of filings from all kinds of people and organizations. They don't have any standing or power, it's just so other viewpoints can be heard.
...and THIS is why Adam Smith had nothing positive to say about businessmen in Wealth of Nations. Capitalism is great, but corporatism (sucking up to the government to get favors and advantages over your competitors) is hideous, and sadly inevitable: when you put slop in the trough, the pigs WILL fight to get it.
The funniest part about this is that amazon is actually unwittingly/unintentionally on the side of authors. They are just trying to protect their profits which they have every right to do but in so doing they are actually protecting many authors who are not part of the author's guild or who would be hurt by this settlement.
As a personal example my girlfriend's father is an author with nine published novels that sold very well when they were published, for various reasons some of those novels are now out of print. I recently approached him with the idea of releasing these out of print works for the kindle. Now he used to be a member of the author's guild but parted ways when he disagreed with the direction they were taking on some issues. So he is no longer a member of the author's guild and he has out of print works that he could potentially reprint digitally for very little cost which would mean some of his older works which are highly sought after could be purchased on the kindle or the iphone app etc. This would mean revenue from these older works that he would otherwise miss out on. His only other option is to apply through the class action and possibly get a tiny fraction of the settlement money. The problem with that is his older works would then be published free digitally by google which directly competes with his ability to sell them through the kindle store or any other potential digital delivery method.
I am sure there are tens of thousands of authors in a similar position and many of them may not even realize it. So I appreciate amazon coming out against this as they have the resources to fight it.
Now if there were some way for an author or rightsholder to opt out of this settlement and block their works from being published free online by google then I would not really have a problem with it. But the idea that google could come along and publish copyrighted works free online without compensating the rightsholder(s) is pretty out there. Imagine if they tried to do this for every album that is currently out of print. How well would that go down?
upon further reading it seems like you can potentially block a book from being published, though it is not exactly clear whether you need to have opted into the settlement to have that control or whether you need to opt out altogether...
Google has a long history of theft of other peoples works, they archive websites in their cache without permission of website owners, including documents, files that otherwise website owners do not want cache - google claims you can block it with a robots.txt file. The reality is if you want to use someones work you ask them first not take then mandate they have to opt-out; anyone that has a website interested in the cache would submit a request on googles site. Google decided to abuse their power.
Youtube - a long history of stealing tv and movie content and with Google pretending they dont have the ability to SEARCH their own system to remove illegal content; don't mind that google search engine technology is supposed to be one of the best in the world. It's a convenient excuse to continue to abuse copyrights and provide content without the permission of owners.
Google Adsense - were specifically caught by Microsoft with encouraging warez sites and how to place banner ads in specific positions on the site to monitize their banner clicks better and thus get Google more money. Clearly they are comfortable hanging around with theifs.
Books - now they are attemping to steal the works of publishers without their permission. If a work is out of print it is up to the author and publishers if they want to continue to distribute that work not up to google or anyone else. Google is trying to grab these books to pad their search engine with more junk material to offset all the seo spam that is in their database and make it seem they are offering something else to people for 'free'. It's free because they stole it.
They continue to get away with it because the majority of people out there were DUPED into believing that google is somehow a corporation that is on their side; the reality is they have suckered most people into this false belief by giving away things for 'free'. People are so willing to pretend nothing is happening when they can get things for free its rather sad.
Seems to me, that more people would be inclined to buy a Kindle. More free stuff to read and try out and EVENTUALLY, these very same people will want to buy a book on the most recent best seller list.
AMAZON FAIL
I'm not exactly sure I understand what you are trying to say but I do think that Amazon is making this big stink about the Google book deal only because it is a threat Amazon's attempts to control the book market. The Kindle is a closed system totally controlled by Amazon and Amazon has already shown a willingness to threaten publishers and authors in their attempt to force exclusive distribution through Amazon and the Kindle.
At least Google is using open standards to make the books available on a variety of presentation systems, computers, open-standard ebooks, etc. Also, from what I have seen in the discussions this book deal by Google is not exclusive and any other party that is interested and willing has the ability to strike a similar deal.
I hope the courts see Amazon's objection to the Google book deal for what it is, a business competitor sorry they did not get there first.
I don't see that the Kindle is that closed. What about Feedbooks? I can get the entire Project Gutenberg list on my Kindle wirelessly, then download any book on the list. Amazon gets no money for this.
Proof of the old adage: "You gotta spend money to make money."
Why does Amazon wants dominance in ebook industry? for MONOPOLY?
Google mite not have great in-sync system with book and other google applications yet but I bet whenever they do it'll be better than anyone else.
I support GOOGLE 1000 times.
Skeptic about MS making just descent product and advertising them(most recent ex. lap top hunter)
Google has the best integration within all their products and the best on-line integration with hardwares too.
Why support Kindle?
Reasons not to support kindle and amazon books.
- They want dominance
- Book retailers will die drastically
- They don't make the display
- They make electrics (except the kindle w/ that ugly keyboard)
- Curious to how other ELECTRIC companies to bring their (obviously) competitive devices
- Too early to dominate in that field
- no itune nor ipod
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kindle's basically a wide screen thin electronic.
Do they expects to us carry cellphones and kindles at the same time and GPS all at the same time?
Where's we gonna put our netbooks???(i don't own one yet)
Here's to the future__
wide(size of your choice --iPhone size/Kindle size;bluetooth headset can make things easy of use) color e-ink display phone of your choice (BB, iphone, android and etc) with downloadable apps(google or kindle or your choice or others)
- no itune nor ipod
Umm this is a reason to support them.
- They don't make the display
Do you think sony makes their displays. I think you will find that 80% of the eink device manufacturers don't make their displays.
- Book retailers will die drastically
I have NO problems with this. They either adapt or die.
- They want dominance
Umm so does Google. So does every company on this planet.
Learn English then come back with a valid argument. Right now all you are say is Amazon bad. Google Good. the only thing Amazon has going against it IMHO is their damn DRM and the ability to yank books from the device. Now this protest. Its not enough to make me drop my Kindle 2 in a fire. But its getting close.
what are these 'books' ?
So, why do people still buy content with DRM, again? If you buy it, you will almost certainly get screwed at some point.
It doesn't seem that hard for a copyright holder to block google if they want too. The settlement limits to out of print, and you can self publish on amazon for almost free, which would seem to me to put the work back into print.