The Great Book Bank Robbery - The Final Month

Back in October, when we first wrote about what we called the Great Book Bank Robbery, we clearly saw Orphan Works as a major issue in the Google Book Settlement. It appeared to be a overly complex and ill conceived give away of copyright by bodies who did even represent the majority of the titles in question. We have long defended out of print but copyright material – 'orphans'. We aim to continue to do so even in the face of those bigger than us who just want what they see as ‘free and available’ or others see as public. The monopoly position granted Google by the back door may still happen, but now one month from objection closure, some are starting to stand up against it.

This weekend the New York Times published an article on the Google Book Settlement, 'Google’s Plan for Out-of-Print Books Is Challenges’. The article covers all sides, but now recognises a, ‘growing chorus is complaining that a far-reaching settlement of a suit brought against Google by publishers and authors is about to grant the company too much power over orphan works.’

Some may say that the scanning programme undertaken by Google was illegal and they are now potentially being rewarded, others that they are too big to fight, others such as their lawyer Alexander Macgillivray, that the agreement, ‘expands access to many of these hard-to-find books in a way that is great for Google, great for authors, great for publishers and great for readers.” He admitted it was the ‘great for Google’ but we all know that already.

In the words of Richard Sarnoff, former chairman of the Association of American Publishers and co-chairman of the American unit of Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, “What we were establishing was a renewed access to a huge corpus of material that was essentially lost in the bowels of a few great libraries.” The fact that it didn’t belong to him or his friends, appears immaterial. The fact that they could not be represented in this give away, obviously was immaterial. The fact that none of those effectively changing the law through the back door, were elected, was immaterial. The fact that neither the authors nor the publishers, represented the great libraries, was immaterial.

The Google Book Settlement remains a bad deal. Some say it was born out of the need to settle a case action suit that was only making lawyers rich, others that they picked on the one piece of common ground neither party owned and built a whole settlement around it. We hope the settlement gets stopped, that the industry draws breath and takes one step back and that it doesn't rush forward in response trying to fix a settlement with other half shot solutions.

The Great Book Bank Robbery - As Long as Google Exists

Ars Technica reports today on the chairman of the Association of American Publishers, Richard Sarnoff’s speech at Princeton on the Google Book Search settlement. Sarnoff speculated that the agreement could effectively give Google and Amazon a "duopoly" in the online book market.

He is reported saying that some aspects of the settlement would be "difficult to replicate" for Google's competitors and that although the publishers he represents didn't set out to create a monopoly in the markets for book search engines or online book sales, the settlement could have that effect. Legal hurdles may make it infeasible for any other firms to build a search engine comparable to Google Book Search.

Sarnoff is also reported saying that the publishers pressed for the creation of this registry in part because it would be too "easy to disintermediate the publisher over time" if Google paid authors directly. This is a strange statement to make. Does this mean the settlement was driven and created to protect publishers and their self interest over authors? Some would speculate that they recognised that it was easier to do a deal and have a job than not do a deal and have no job.

The books will apparently be stored on the Google "cloud," and users will access the books they have purchased a few pages at a time using a Web-based viewer. This means that the files are not downloaded but only available online. Sarnoff said that the system Google has agreed to implement won't "involve the transfer of files." So as long as you are connected and online you can read if your not you can’t. We would not argue with the online logic and it is one we have long advocated.

We would not expect Google to walk away from Google Book Search or their cloud service. As we would not expect them to walk away from many other dead ventures such as their video store, their social network Lively, Google audio ads, Google Print Ads, the Dodgeball mobile service, Catalogue Search, Notebook and Jaiku, their answer to Twitter. . However if they did, then the books bought are likely to disappear, as access to them would be impossible. We presume the settlement includes some form of Escrow agreement and termination transfer. Sarnoff put it that users' ownership of a book will continue only "as long as Google exists."