GooglePrint

I've avoided blogging about the brouhaha over Google's plans to scan books and make snippets of them available on the Web, primarily because I haven't had the opportunity to read up on all the issues involved. On a gut-level basis, I think that it's going to happen anyway--either by Google or someone else--so obstinately impeding the entire process is going to be a waste of time, time that could be better spent devising ways of fixing potential problems so that it's a win-win situation. Look at the music industry: they dilly dallied with lawsuits and saber-rattling and all we ended up with was Sony's rootkits and the proliferation of file-swappede MP3s anyway. Meanwhile, Apple came up with a good idea and, lo and behold, it's working.

But back to Google...what I think is interesting is that Google is now getting permission from publishers to scan books. Funny, I didn't even catch this, but sci-fi author Charles Stross makes a good point:

...[I]t seems to me that The Authors Guild are absolutely right to bring a lawsuit against Google over this project -- because a critical aspect of the publishing world is being damaged by Google's ignorance.

Which is this:

Publishers do not generally own copyright over the books they publish -- authors own copyright, and license publishers to make certain uses of their work, with strings attached.

I can't emphasize this strongly enough; in talking about getting permission to index the books from publishers, Google is talking to the wrong people.

Let me give you a concrete example. I'm a relatively recently published author, and my book contracts all discuss electronic reproduction rights. However, none of my book contracts discuss the issue of the rights to index the book and publish the index for use by third parties. Arguably, this is a separate contractual right and one that is not implicitly granted to any publishers simply by their having obtained a license to publish the work in its entirety as an ebook.
...
Moreover, the rights to publish an authors' books may well revert to the author if the publisher stops using them to make money. If, for example, a book goes out of print (that is, the publisher runs out of copies and decides not to reprint it), or if sales fall below a certain number, the author can notify the publisher that they are terminating the contract, at which point the publisher stops being allowed to publish the book and the author can take it to another publisher or publish it for themself.

By asking publishers to grant them a right that the publisher is not entitled to grant Google is laying itself open to lawsuits for copyright violation by authors. Google is also systematically undermining the rights of authors to exercise control over how their copyrighted works are published.

I, personally, think the Google print index is a great idea, and I'd really like it to succeed. However, it would be counter-productive to say the least were Google to contribute to the reduction of authors -- the folks who write the books -- to the status of producers of work for hire.

Stross is absolutely right, of course. He goes on to mention an initiative called COCOA, or the Copyright Owners Control of Access:

The idea is that a database can be established which will permit publishers to specify their default preferences for online republication services such as Google print, or Amazon's search inside, and which will also allow authors to issue overriding instructions for all, or some, of their works.

There are good points and bad aspects of the COCOA approach, but the point is that it is a step toward solving actual problems rather than just saying "technology bad" and sending out phalanxes of lawyers to browbeat folks into submission.