Comments on: Guest Post: The Google Books Settlement–It’s Not Too Late to Fix It

By: The Great Geek Manual » Geek Media Round-Up: April 20, 2011

The Great Geek Manual » Geek Media Round-Up: April 20, 2011 — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:35:11 +0000

[...] The Google Books Settlement–It’s Not Too Late to Fix It [...]

By: Michael Capobianco

Michael Capobianco — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:16:53 +0000

I agree, Elizabeth. Although everything before 1923 is definitely out of copyright, and everything from 1964 on is definitely in copyright, there’s no definitive way to tell if a book from ’23-’63 in in copyright or not, since the copyright had to be renewed to keep the work copyrighted, and the Copyright Office’s renewal records are a mess. One obvious, common sense step that Congress could make, if it takes copyright seriously, would be to provide the necessary funding to digitize all post-1923 copyright records and pass a law that gives those records legal standing, so that if a work’s renewal isn’t in the records, it’s prima facie evidence that the work wasn’t renewed and is in the public domain. There would need to be a procedure for rightsholders to contest this if they can produce other evidence that the work was renewed, but this would go a long way to clarify which works from that period are in the public domain.

By: EMoon

EMoon — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:00:48 +0000

One thing we need is a standard court-acceptable procedure for determining that a writer’s work is out of copyright. (Out of print is irrelevant to copyright, and that’s the underlying mistake Google made…and many others make. “I can’t find the book” does not mean the book is out of copyright, and “I can’t find the writer” does not mean the book is a true “orphan work.”) Beyond that, Google put no effort into finding out that my books were still protected by copyright and in print before scanning and digitizing some of them. So their claim to be creating a socially valuable storehouse of unavailable works was misleading at best.

The law may allow scavengers to collect aluminum cans and bottles from the roadside and sell them…the law does not allow these scavengers to trespass into nearby fields and steal whatever they find, claiming it must be abandoned, ownerless property as well. Copyright is our fence.