Push Button Paradise

As you may know, I am an author and my book is available on Google Print. First the stupid Authors Guild (which I personally reject) file suit. Next, the publishers.

I hope Google succeeds here. What they are doing helps counteract the major contraction of what's considered fair use. But I have doubts, based on a historical precedent.

If anything moves slower than publishers, it's the legal system. Think back to the good old days of mp3.com. They went out and purchased thousands of CDs, loaded them onto their server, and let individual users--once they thoroughly proved they owned the physical CD--stream the audio. This too seemed like it was within fair use.

MP3 got sued by the record componies, and lost big time, to the (ahem) tune of $150,000 per infringing work. What they got nailed for was, not streaming the audio, but the initial act of copying it onto their servers. Quite a strong parallel to Google Print, no? They've done a massive copying act in scanning and OCRing books on a huge scale. Even though they've put in limits to make sure Joe Downloader can't grab entire free books, I'm afraid of how the decision might come down.

Ultimately authors and publishers need something like this. It will be Yet Another Shame if this effort gets swept away in a flood of copyright protectionism. I'll be sad but not surprised to see the copyright industry tighten their grip a little more. -m

posted at: 23:55 | under: 2005-10 | 0 comment(s)