COCOA Petition (copyright issues)

If this is really so great, why isn't Amazon jumping on it? wouldn't these massive corporatiosn be happy to give prospective buyers partial teasers while respecting author's rights?


Why do I suspect the issue is mroe complicated than it's being presented as?

fallenangelwriter said:

wouldn't these massive corporatiosn be happy to give prospective buyers partial teasers while respecting author's rights?

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In a word--no. The author isn't in the loop at all with these big companies. Amazon communicates with the publishers, which may or may not have the right to give permission for their authors' books be scanned and reproduced online. Google communicates with publishers also, and with libraries, which don't have the right under any circumstances to give permission for reproduction of copyright-protected work.

The extent of authors' involvement in all this is that they are allowed to opt out of these programs. But that's the reverse of the way it should work, since copyright law doesn't allow copying without the permission of the copyright holder. Instead of placing the onus on the author to contact Google and Amazon and say "No, I don't want this," Google and Amazon should be approaching authors for permission, and should not include a copyright-protected work in their program unless they receive that permission. Many authors' groups and industry groups feel that this is massive copyright violation. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers are suing Google.

Personally, I'm not so concerned about Amazon, which uses its Search Inside feature as a way to sell books. My in-print books are included in the program, and even though my publisher didn't ask my permission for this (as it's contractually required to do before any electronic use of my work), I think the program is beneficial and I've chosen not to opt out.

Google, however, intends to profit from its scanning program, creating a huge online library where advertising clicks will generate revenue. Supposedly, this revenue will be shared with the publishers--but whether it will ever trickle down to the authors, whose content is being hijacked, is an open question. I intend to opt out of Google Print.

- Victoria

Sorry about that. It was 2:45 in the morning, and I was being rambly. Summed up much tighter: I don't understand the objection to Google Print's adverts. They're there, but they're tucked right down at the bottom of the page - far, far more prominent are the sidebar links that head straight to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, WHSmiths, or wherever else. When it comes to ordering the book you're sampling, it does everything but throw in free gift wrapping.

Google is certainly making some cash off the deal, but not much - the main gist of the plan is to make books searchable to improve the scope of its search engine/database, and thus present a better overall platform. If Google wanted to monetise it, it really wasted every opportunity - I don't even think it has referral links in the ordering buttons. If anything, it's a huge jump over Amazon, which has a vested interest whether you buy the thing or not, and can only give you information about its status on Amazon.

In practical terms, almost everything about the plan is geared towards selling the author's book. The argument about it making much real money out of authors' hard work just doesn't hold water. You can't read a whole book online (at least, without a whole lot of fiddling - I've never tried to rip one from the archives, although I won't claim there's no way). even if you wanted to do such an uncomfortable thing. The Google Cache is far more contentious.

I agree that Google's moves have been extremely arrogant, and I don't have a problem with the copyright owner being able to give the yay or nay (although I'm fine with Google Print, it's a nasty precedent to set). I also agree with some of the issues people have pointed at it - although not quite so vehemently.

But it's still an over-reaction, and COCOA sounds even worse. If you're not going to include all your information in the archive for searching, it may as well just not be there in the first place - while the techniques talked about (covering up thirds of the page, not showing alternate pages and whatever) are so completely missing the point that every book using it should just be pulled from the archive outright. The argument is incorrect anyway, at least as far as Google goes - it's a trinary system already, not just on-and-off.

As a reader, there is nothing that annoys me quite so much as looking for something and getting tripped up by entirely artificial road-blocks. The whole point of having a searchable archive is to see what information there is, and in what context - a sample of the book, geared to what you're actually looking for. Desperately wrapping everything up in such a restrictive form is every bit as self-spiting as the music industry's increasingly horrific protection systems.

In particular, it suffers from one major problem - that given the choice, a company's first response is almost invariably to lock down everything that's even remotely lock-downable - we already see it in movie trailers timing out, or PDFs that disable the text-to-speech features or copy and pasting for absolutely no good reason. Culturally, it's a cul-de-sac.

More pressingly, regardless of the overall coal, Project Cocoa's goal is to prevent people reading your words, while services like Google Print exist to sell books. As a writer, I know which side I'm on, and as a reader, I know which one is more likely to make me buy a book rather than file it under 'annoyance'.

victoriastrauss said:

The extent of authors' involvement in all this is that they are allowed to opt out of these programs. But that's the reverse of the way it should work, since copyright law doesn't allow copying without the permission of the copyright holder. Instead of placing the onus on the author to contact Google and Amazon and say "No, I don't want this," Google and Amazon should be approaching authors for permission, and should not include a copyright-protected work in their program unless they receive that permission. Many authors' groups and industry groups feel that this is massive copyright violation. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers are suing Google.

Personally, I'm not so concerned about Amazon, which uses its Search Inside feature as a way to sell books. My in-print books are included in the program, and even though my publisher didn't ask my permission for this (as it's contractually required to do before any electronic use of my work), I think the program is beneficial and I've chosen not to opt out.

Google, however, intends to profit from its scanning program, creating a huge online library where advertising clicks will generate revenue. Supposedly, this revenue will be shared with the publishers--but whether it will ever trickle down to the authors, whose content is being hijacked, is an open question. I intend to opt out of Google Print.

- Victoria

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There is a lot of confusion because Google are doing two things at the same time, and most people appear to think they're the same system. Your books can be (as far as Google are concerned) in one of three states:

* Opt out -- in this case they are not shown at all
* Opt in -- in this case you can view complete pages of the book (although not all pages will be available)
* Neither -- in this case, a few lines of text are shown for each search result.

In all cases except "opt in" the only advertising is a link to buy a copy of the book, so any revenue will of course get as far as the author, via standard royalties. I'm not sure how the opt in revenue is handled, though.

I think the Author's Guild et al are overreacting based on not understanding what exactly Google are doing. It's exactly the same thing they've been doing with web pages since their creation, just done with books instead. I don't see anything wrong with this.

(You can see exactly the kind of things that will be shown on this page here, so you can make up your own mind)

The service is live, you can see it directly: http://print.google.com. Punch in any search term.

And if you punch in the phrase "hot little juicy love-box" (which uniquely belongs to one literary work), you get that work but, alas! you do not get the right page. It shows you the page before the one it appears on.

The question is, why shouldn't the copyright owners have a say in what's done with their copyrighted material? They should be the ones giving permission.

The question is, why shouldn't the copyright owners have a say in what's done with their copyrighted material?

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I disagree. Not that copyright owners should have their say, I quite concur on that, but the question should be whether or not things like this are a good idea - both culturally and commercially. If not for these examples specifically, then for the precedent they'll be setting. I'm yet to be convinced by the industry's arguments, and in the case of many arguments I've seen against book searching, I'm yet to be convinced that most of the people berating the service have even been to the page.

Several years of increasingly horrible DRM are as good an argument against giving copyright owners total control as you'll find: incredibly restrictive, ineffective, and in many cases, actively hostile. I wish I could say that things like Project Cocoa strike me as a fair compromise, but really, they don't. Far from impressing me with the anti-Google argument, the statements and debating points I've read from groups like the Author's Guild have only made me want to double-check that my local library is fireproof.

Richard said:

Several years of increasingly horrible DRM are as good an argument against giving copyright owners total control as you'll find: incredibly restrictive, ineffective, and in many cases, actively hostile. I wish I could say that things like Project Cocoa strike me as a fair compromise, but really, they don't. Far from impressing me with the anti-Google argument, the statements and debating points I've read from groups like the Author's Guild have only made me want to double-check that my local library is fireproof.

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Copyright ownwers are just that. . .OWNERS. As owners, we should have complete control. There is no comprimise. There is no argument. Either I control the work I create or someone else controls it. There are no debating points. I own the work I create, and no one, Google, or readers, or anyone else on the planet, has any right at all to use it without my permission

It isn't up to me to opt out, it's up to them to come to me and ask whether or not I want to opt in. No one has any more right to use my intellectual property without permission than they have to use my car or my house without permission.

You're doggone right I'm actively hostile on this issue. If fighting for copyright ownership is ineffective, it's because thieves don't respect the rights of any owner, copyright or otherwise. No one has to give copyright owners full control of their work. We already own control, and money grubbers and thieves are trying to remove that control. Google absolutely does expect to earn a lot of money with this, but money or not, my work, my property, is my work and my property, so profit or not, they have zero right to use it without my permission.

If people don't want to buy my books because I want control of them, fine. They are plenty of other books for them to buy. Happy reading. COCOA's goal is not to stop anyone from reading my work. That's silliness. Their goal is to stop anyone from using my work without my permission.

If you think DMA is hostile on this issue, wait until you see what individual lawyers do. I have little money and less time right now, but I do have a lawyer. It's sad that writers need lawyers to keep what is already theirs, but that's the case.

I hope the courts handle this in the right way. I hope even more that enough lawsuits will discourage Google, and anyone else, from thinking my work somehow belongs to them. But if not, you can bet your last dollar that individual lawyers will get into the act on a regular basis.

I love my readers. Nothing is more special than having a reader say they love something I've written. But readers have no side and no argument in the copyright issue. I own the copyright. Period. I already have full control of the copyright. Period. No one has to give me full control, I have to give them permission to use anything I create.

As for libraries being fireproof, I'm glad they aren't. If someone burns my local library, they'll have to order another eight copies of my books when they rebuild.

People read me for free at the library, sell my advance reading copies on Ebay, buy my used books on Amazon, and I don't make a cent from these transactions.

I'm also all for them.

Steal me. Download me. Search inside me. Google my complete text. Infirnge me.

Just read me.

I remember when Metallica shut down Napster. Three major things resulted from that.

1. Many other peer to peer sharing networks showed up.
2. Sony began selling copy-protected CDs, which load spyware onto your computer.
3. People hated Metallica, and they lost sales rather than received compensation for their lost royalties.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the band Phish, which encourages fans to trade music freely.

Here's the thing--I want to be read. The more people that read me, the better off I am. Some of those freebies will translate into sales. Some won't. But they all add to name recognition, to brand awareness, and to more people knowing who I am and what I write.

I wouldn't want anyone to print up editions of my books without compensating me. But I don't mind being Googleable, even if they make some advertising revenue from my books.

Jamesaritchie said:

Copyright ownwers are just that. . .OWNERS. As owners, we should have complete control. There is no comprimise. There is no argument.

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I didn't say you don't own it. I agree, Google's actions are highly arrogant and they deserve the lawsuits they'll undoubtedly get. I said this already. The question has nothing to do with your right to say no, or on opt-in vs opt-out. The one I'm thinking of is to what extent declaring that the rules are the rules are the rules is actually a good idea. I have no specific answer for it, only opinions, on either side. For instance, while as a writer I rely on copyright, I also object to a lot of what it's turned into - the classic example being Disney pinching from the public domain and then legislating to present its own work going into the melting pot.

As for a lack of compromise, copyright is fundementally a compromise, developed to serve specific ends, or as the Supreme Court described it:

"The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good."

Not that it's my supreme court, but that's the gist of it over here as well. True, it's been warped from the moment the idea sprang to life, and the commericialism/culture balance weighted more and more towards the cash, but it's still the point of the thing. And in this case, both culture and commerce are being challenged: the concept of having to buy the book to see its content and giving up freebies, versus the extra exposure and sales that Google claims to offer.

In this case, while Google's actions unquestionably go against the rules, their actions strike me as much more akin to libraries, lending and fair use/dealing parts rather than theft and direct profiteering, which is what the industry assualt on it has been treating it as since day one. I've seen all kinds of complaints about how evil they are for doing it, but the discussion over whether what they've actually done is good thing or not (heck, it may not be - I'm just looking at the question) has been drowned out by a desperate knee-jerk boot-stomp from groups like the Author's Guild - with far too many arguments speaking from a position of determined ignorance (such as the recent Peter Pan story) rather than solid ground.

Personally speaking, I'm more interested in knowing whether this move is beneficial or detrimental to my profession and dealing with it on that basis, than in the protracted, inevitable legal battles it's going to cause behind the scenes. If nothing else, trying to crush things in the courtroom didn't stop MP3 piracy or movie piracy or BitTorrent or anything else - it just crushes individual groups and moves the market on somewhere else. The second someone sets up the equivalent of AllMyMP3.com for searchable books, (which is doable - there's a heavy pirate market it could use to source material, even without Microsoft/Yahoo/Google's resources), the legal arguments become effectively moot anyway. Individual companies can get the hammer for it, and with great justice, but the genie remains out of the bottle.

If what Google is doing is to the benefit of the industry as a whole, even if it's not within the letter or spirit of the rules, it seems far more sensible to work with it to make the inevitable shakeup work to everyone's satisfaction than to risk unleashing a plague. If it's better, change the rules. Of course, if it's detrimental, fair enough, steps should be taken. It may well be. I don't know. I certainly don't agree with a lot of what people say about reading on the internet - especially folks like Cory Doctorow - and my stance isn't that all this should be made free and open and utopian for all. It's the lack of any real discussion that worries me, not the verdicts being made, on an issue that goes far beyond individual authors, publishers and Google's business plan.

Concerning Google's theft of copyrighted works:

Google should neither put the burden of "opting out" of their theft of literary work upon the authors who produced them, nor upon the current owners of the copyrights. This is backwards and wrong and immoral.

"I'll take your bicycle*, but if you don't want me to, then please opt out after you discover, in fact, that your bicycle* has been taken."

The bad precedent here means lots of different things, but the one I find most entertaining is the possibility of "scanning" all of Google's proprietary code and, in a fashion similar to their book nabbing and sharing, making it available online.

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* Some may desire to use
"wallet," here, for clarity.

JA Konrath said:

People read me for free at the library, sell my advance reading copies on Ebay, buy my used books on Amazon, and I don't make a cent from these transactions.

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False arguements, all.

The library buys its copies. I get royalties for every copy they buy. If they want another copy, they have to buy another copy.

Library books aren't free to the readers. Libraries are line-items in tax bills. People who want library privileges who aren't from the tax area have to pay to get their library cards.

Every one of my used books on Amazon was printed with my permission and was bought and paid for. I've probably already spent the money.

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This sort of nonsense is "sharing" like a subway mugging is "sharing."

Jamesaritchie said:

There are no debating points. I own the work I create, and no one, Google, or readers, or anyone else on the planet, has any right at all to use it without my permission

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That's not true, though. Anyone has the right to use your work in any way they wish as long as that work is "fair use". What is and isn't fair use is a very hazy area, but depends on factors including how much of the work is used, how it affects the market for the work and whether or not it is done for profit.

It's my belief that Google's "neither opt-in nor opt-out" setup is probably fair use.

Richard said:

The service is live, you can see it directly: http://print.google.com. Punch in any search term.

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Except that for various reasons, only the opt-in books are available at the moment.

I think Google Print could be good for writers, but Google needs to respect the intellectual property rights of others. I'm pretty certain Google does not take such a cavalier attitude when their own IP rights are potentially being infringed.

jules said:

That's not true, though. Anyone has the right to use your work in any way they wish as long as that work is "fair use". It's my belief 2that Google's "neither opt-in nor opt-out" setup is probably fair use.

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Looking from an internet perspective specifically, it's not dissimilar to how Google and the other search engines have always historically worked - do a search on the web, and you'll usually get the same snippet*, link and advert combination, using information pulled out of the central database, and all running on an opt-out system (via robots.txt). The subject has changed, but the copyright issues are basically the same whether it's a printed book or a HTML page.

It's an interesting comparison - one usage of the technique entirely villified, the other so firmly part of how we're used to working online that it's almost impossible to remember that it ever worked differently.

(On the other side of the argument, it's not the first time Google's hit hot-water over things like this - Google News ruffled a whole lot of feathers at launch. As for how it deals with things, pinching its archive would be a pretty hefty challenge, but it definitely imposes restrictions on how much third-parties can access (http://www.google.com/apis/api_faq.html#gen13) and it's certainly jumped on a few people for trespassing on its patch before - adult search engine Booble springs to mind.)

(* Either a specific one, as meta-tagged by the writer, or the part of the page that uses the term specifically, especially when dealing with blogs. As said elsewhere in the thread, Google is set up to only use tiny snippets for non-opted in books)

I am going to quote something from a recent legal decision that is pretty clear on this subject.

[E]ven if the dissent is correct that some authors, in the long run, are helped, not hurt, by Database reproductions, the fact remains that the Authors who brought the case now before us have asserted their rights under § 201(c). We may not invoke our conception of their interests to diminish those rights.

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New York Times, Inc., et al., v. Tasini, et al., 533 U.S. 483, 498 n.6 (2001).

I can't comment further on this topic due to my involvement with COCOA.

James D. Macdonald said:

False arguements, all.

The library buys its copies. I get royalties for every copy they buy. If they want another copy, they have to buy another copy.

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You get royalties for copies bought, not copies read.

A library book can be checked out 50 times. Those are fifty people who read you without paying you royalties. Multiply that by 15,000 libraries in the United States, and that's why some authors are annoyed by libraries.

Personally, I love libraries. Many of my peers do not.

James D. Macdonald said:

Every one of my used books on Amazon was printed with my permission and was bought and paid for. I've probably already spent the money.

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Your used books are for sale on Amazon on the very same page as your new books. So a buyer can pay $1.00 for your book, rather than pay full price. While you've already earned royalties for the used books that are for sale, many authors dislike having both their new books and their used books available at the same time. What if you went to a Borders and saw used copies of your books available ont he shelf alongside new copies? Are you sayign that doesn't hurt the author?

Again, I'm all for used books. Many of my peers are not.

James D. Macdonald said:

False arguements, all.

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How is the buying and selling of galleys a false arguement? or do we have different definitions of the word 'all'?