The problems with Google Book Search

[Richard L Brandt]

Larry Page and Sergey Brin have wanted to digitize all the books in the world since they were at Stanford working under the Digital Libraries Initiative. It's part of their goal to catalog all the world's information and make it widely available. Not everyone has access to a great library. The library at the University of Michigan has seven million books. The Oxford University library has centuries-old books available only to qualified scholars.

Getting access to books in print was no problem. But orphan books, still under copyright but no longer in print, are tougher. It's sometimes virtually impossible to find who owns the copyrights. In 1790, Congress set copyright terms for 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14 years. By this century, the length of a copyright had been extended to 95 years past the death of the copyright owner. Google thinks that's a bit excessive.

In order to pacify publishers with books no longer in print but afraid of losing revenues from them to Google, company lawyer David Drummond reached a settlement with publishers on October 28, 2008. Google is to make payments totaling $125 million to authors and publishers when the copyright owners can be found. the money comes from any revenue Google makes from those digitized works. It has also created a not-for-profit Books Rights Registry to locate copyright holders, create records outlining their rights, and offer copyright holders the option to opt in or out of the program.

Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, the U.S. copyright office,some libraries, a few university professors and others say it gives Google a monopoly on orphan books. Privacy advocates say it will give Google yet more information about users: what kinds of books we read. Google responds that it does not have an exclusive deal and that anyone willing to put up the money to satisfy publishers, as Google did, can also enter the market. Google is trying to reach a new compromise, and a hearing is currently scheduled for Feb. 18.

Is Google Book Search just another monopoly for Google with dangerous repercussions? Or is it simply a great service to the world, becoming one great online library, while competitors who complain are simply not willing to put their money where their lawsuits are?

[Curtis J Neeley Jr., MFA]

Larry Page and Sergey Brin simply trespassed on private computers attached to the early wire network called the Internet by visiting these computers uninvited and copying the original authored content and revealing "snippets" of this copied data in hopes this would fall under the backwards United States exception to copy[rite].

The 1996 landmark free-speech error by the Supreme Court resulted in creation of an unregulated new manner of using one of the oldest mediums for instant wire communications.  This new manner of using wire communications was christened "the Internet" and called a "unique and wholly new medium of communications" in the landmark error of ACLU v RENO,(95-511).  The Justice writing the landmark error that created "the Internet" was twenty-five years old when the United States used the first WMD created to create enough terror in Japan to end WWII.

 

Google Inc conspired with the Authors' Guild and attempted to again trespass on original content uninvited and display this against the authors exclusive rights very much like Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially trespassed on private computers attached to the early wire network called the Internet.  This settlement was soundly rejected and not found in the least bit fair.  Hundreds of authors and hundreds of visual artists and numerous countries objected to the HOAX including the United States' Attorney General DOJ.

The author of this response objected and has filed a separate Action in the Western District of Arkansas  that includes violations of privacy and authors' rights but not the United States' backwards copy[rite] or Title 17. 

Neeley v NameMedia Inc et al, (5:12-cv-05074).  The 47 USC §232 that exists exclusively as Docket 1 attachment #1($.08/pg) exhibit 232(free) results in the end of the "Open Internet" and balancing of the US budget when passed by Congress.  The twenty-five page complaint strong>1($,08/pg), PDF(free), HTML(free)> seeks the same thing and is currently called a GAME that has cost Google Inc hundreds of thousands in legal fees already.

Google Inc is not likely to exist as anything but a memory of a billionaire building bubble by 2020 and partly due to the Books fiasco.