shimenawa - Latest comments on Waking up to Books in Richmond

In response to: Waking up to Books in Richmond

Peter [Visitor] — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:17:42 +0000

There are other issues that are troublesome about the public library provisions. First, note that this is a license, not equipment. The public library, which already has overwhelming demand for Internet access, will have to devote a machine to this purpose.

Second, I haven't seen any discussion of how libraries that receive e-Rate discounts will meet its requirements that Google's content be filtered to meet community standards.

Third, and most problematic: if a library charges for printing, then Google is going to collect some of that money from libraries and turn it over to the publishers. It is as if part of the photocopying revenue in libraries was sent to the CCC. Do we really want to start thinking that publishers should be paid even if just one page of a book is copied?

In response to: Waking up to Books in Richmond

pbrantley [Member] — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:45:07 +0000

Georgia - There was nothing in my post hostile to libraries, nor anything that should make universities defensive. I am only observing that more could and should be done.

I do take contention with your blanket condemnation of for-profit enterprise -- cold-hearted pursuit of economic gain is at one end of a necessary component of the capitalist social contract, but there is much, much gray before black.

Publishers as a group are not deaf to these considerations; e.g., this post was picked up and favorably mentioned by Publishers Lunch, perhaps the single most influential and widely distributed daily news source in trade publishing in the U.S..

Conversations may all take time, but ignorance is widely distributed, and no party here should be assumed to be fundamentally evil; most in fact are laced through with good intent.

In response to: Waking up to Books in Richmond

Georgia [Visitor] — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:14:35 +0000

My own opinion; my own experience only:

Peter, to the extent there is ANY public access, the libraries pushed to make it happen. Its inadequacies reflect their lack of bargaining power, not a lack of understanding about what's needed.

Publishers and authors by and large do not seem to get the potential of free access. Google has built into its pricing algorithm the ability (the RIGHT) to demonstrate to them with experiments how 'free' increases sales of books, to persuade them that it's in THEIR best interests, because it's only THEIR best interests they are interested in. So talking to them about moral obligations may not be an effective way to reach them. Google was sympathetic, the publishers and authors -- not.

In the end, all are for-profit companies or individuals interested in their own bottom lines. They are not public interest orgs.

This is a start. Nothing more. It doesn't define what's possible. It marks a spot where we start to imagine what's possible. Persuading those who basically only know one way to make money from copyrights, that it's time to let it go, no easy task.

In response to: Waking up to Books in Richmond

Jerome [Visitor] — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:07:07 +0000

You must be one of them there pinko socialistic redistributors I keep hearing about. Next you'll be ranting on about 'La propriété intellectuelle, c'est le vol!' or some such.

I haven't read through the whole settlement yet, but honestly, from what I've seen it looks like a mess for libraries. I think Harvard is to be applauded for backing away from this.

In response to: Waking up to Books in Richmond

Adam Hodgkin [Visitor] — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:47:41 +0000

Peter -- completely agree with you on this. One of the difficulties of understanding the 'settlement' is that one has the very strong feeling that some parts of it were written by Google and some parts by the Guild/AAP. Its often not clear who is driving the deal. This provision feels very much like the Guild/AAP being tough and unyielding on free access, which is surely terribly short-sighted from the point of view of developing the value of Copyrights. What would the parties to this settlement lose by saying that Free Access would be limited to a maximum of 25% of the seats in public libraries and no more than 20% of those seats could be made available to remote users. Such a 'generous' allocation would be a great way of promoting the use and value of public libraries. If it put pressure on the provision of seats in public libraries it would be of huge benefit to publishers and authors in many ways. I hope that the judge requires a much more generous provision of public access as a sine qua non for his sign off on the use of Orphan Copyrights....There should surely be some window for remote use of the printed resources by library members, this is the way libraries work in the 21st C.