Authors Hit Google with Copyright Lawsuit

[Jared Moya]

An organization of more than 8,000 authors accused Google Inc. Tuesday of "massive copyright infringement," saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot put its books in the public domain for commercial use without permission.


"The authors' works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use," The Author's Guild Inc. said in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.


The lawsuit asked the court to block Google from copying the books so the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works. It sought class-action status on behalf of anyone or any entity with a copyright to a literary work at the University of Michigan library.


Read the complete article (http://www.zeropaid.com/news/5714/Authors+Hit+Google+with+Copyright+Lawsuit/)

[Signa]

and what the hell do you call the public library system?

[silentscream]

google will profit from this u see

so the authers are pissed that they wont get a slice of the pie

[Potato]

That didn't take long.

[mountain_rage]

Anything for money in the good old u s of a

[drei]

google will profit from this u see

so the authers are pissed that they wont get a slice of the pie

So you think they are wrong for wanting "a piece of the pie" for their own works?

[mountain_rage]

I think the fact google is offering such a great databasse to save the authors works when they die and no one cares about them anymore is a good thing not a bad. Its not like they were making money off it now. It also cost money to maintain this databasse so if you ask me those authors and shove it. Copyright all together needs to relax.

[DigitalJunkie]

Free lunch!

[Spiritsilence]

Public library (does not equal) the mass distribution of the internet. The vast majority of people will still be more interested in reading books on paper, for a long time. At least, until some new piece of hardware is made that is small, portable, and enjoyable to read from.

I can easily understand why the authors would not want their works online, especially if they were all being mass scanned by Google, which would probably put them up in an easy to read format that wouldn't hurt the eyes (which most books available online at the moment are, since they're usually in a basic text format).

If they were to scan all works that are currently out-of-print, and whose authors are dead, i.e. Shakespeare, Tolkien, etc. and work with the publishers to add books as they go out of print, so that they aren't destroying royalties from living authors, as well as steadily increasing the size of their database... (Since children and grandchildren really don't need to be profitting from royalties from something they had no part in creating themselves.)

That would be something that would be very cool, and something worth checking out. It would be anyway, but if they were permitted to scan and add in everything... I can already see the new portable technologies they would be selling to read the books from the 'net, and how easy it would be to use them, and it would be so much cheaper to just buy one of them and download all of the books instead of buying them... It would definately hurt the authors still alive, and hurt them bad. Authors aren't exactly rock stars and movie gods, banking six to seven figures plus.

Musicians and movies stars aren't really losing much, if any, money right now from people downloading their stuff, but if literature became easily accessible on the internet, all old and new stuff, and the technologies were available to read them easily and conveniently (I can already see small, backlit hardware on store shelves), it would become almost impossible to be a full time writer, because it simply would not be economically feasible to make enough money writing for a living, when most people (if not everyone) are accessing your book for free from online "libraries".

There would still be the old school junkies like me, who like the feel of having a book in their hands, and that smell from a new hardcover, who would still be buying stuff as it comes out... But there wouldn't be many of us, not when they already cost $20-$30 a piece, and you could just download it for free... Leave these guys alone, they've got families to feed, and if you take their royalties away, you take their livelihoods. And not just in propaganda, for real.

[Afn]

and what the hell do you call the public library system?

Controlled theft.
Controlled LEGAL theft.

The concept of public libaries with free access is about 100 years old. Historically, most people did not have access to libraries, they were private and for the wealthy.

The copyright cartel wants to control information and exclude access to a select few. We must stop them.

[Afn]

Public library (does not equal) the mass distribution of the internet. The vast majority of people will still be more interested in reading books on paper, for a long time. At least, until some new piece of hardware is made that is small, portable, and enjoyable to read from.

I can easily understand why the authors would not want their works online, especially if they were all being mass scanned by Google, which would probably put them up in an easy to read format that wouldn't hurt the eyes (which most books available online at the moment are, since they're usually in a basic text format).

If they were to scan all works that are currently out-of-print, and whose authors are dead, i.e. Shakespeare, Tolkien, etc. and work with the publishers to add books as they go out of print, so that they aren't destroying royalties from living authors, as well as steadily increasing the size of their database... (Since children and grandchildren really don't need to be profitting from royalties from something they had no part in creating themselves.)

That would be something that would be very cool, and something worth checking out. It would be anyway, but if they were permitted to scan and add in everything... I can already see the new portable technologies they would be selling to read the books from the 'net, and how easy it would be to use them, and it would be so much cheaper to just buy one of them and download all of the books instead of buying them... It would definately hurt the authors still alive, and hurt them bad. Authors aren't exactly rock stars and movie gods, banking six to seven figures plus.

Musicians and movies stars aren't really losing much, if any, money right now from people downloading their stuff, but if literature became easily accessible on the internet, all old and new stuff, and the technologies were available to read them easily and conveniently (I can already see small, backlit hardware on store shelves), it would become almost impossible to be a full time writer, because it simply would not be economically feasible to make enough money writing for a living, when most people (if not everyone) are accessing your book for free from online "libraries".

There would still be the old school junkies like me, who like the feel of having a book in their hands, and that smell from a new hardcover, who would still be buying stuff as it comes out... But there wouldn't be many of us, not when they already cost $20-$30 a piece, and you could just download it for free... Leave these guys alone, they've got families to feed, and if you take their royalties away, you take their livelihoods. And not just in propaganda, for real.

Again, what the content industries fear most is the value of indidvidual works will drop to zero, and information becomes valueless because information becomes ubiquidous (globally accessable from anywhere from free sources.)

I think the point of the google scanning service is to scan books that take up shelf space so you can free more physical space and preserve knowledge, search knowledge and sell access to that knowledge though agreements.

Few artists make millions selling mass copies of product to millions of people. Copyright is flawed and few people want to change the system that makes corporations churn out thousands of titles and makes a few authors wealthy, while screwing the rest of us.