Wow. 6am and I haven't slept - too much coffee yesterday. So I've
spent the night meeting the deadlines I planned to meet tomorrow
(today), since I know I'll be too buggered to do them otherwise.
And now I'm sitting here, kind of astounded by the meh over the Google
Books thing.
I'm personally fairly laissez faire about the internet. Over the past
15 years or so, I've put tons of work out there, both my own and
others, for free - in magazines that have asked me for poems, or in
Masthead, or in all those poetryetc projects, or on Theatre Notes.
I've never objected to fanfic of my work - when fans asked me I gave
them the necessary permissions so they could upload their stuff to
FanFiction.net without any hesitation. A couple of months or so ago I
found that I'm also being enthusiastically pirated on sites like
BitTorrent - around 200,000 downloads, at my most conservative
estimate. I thought about that, and it didn't worry me - I figure that
some of them will buy the books if they like them, and the rest, well,
I'm not going to run to the publishers bleating copyright
infringement, because that goes against how I figure the energies of
the net works. It's just a bunch of individuals filesharing.
The point is that aside from those naughty pirates, I am always asked,
just as I always ask others before I publish their work. The point is
that Google isn't asking, it's taking.You can be sure that Google
isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart - it is planning to
make a lot of money out of this.
A private mega-corporation overturning the basic tenets of the Berne
Convention through a predatory fiat ratified through a US court
*without any international representation* doesn't just change the
rules, it changes the game.
This goes well beyond self interest. That's what I don't get about the meh.
xA
On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 4:05 AM, Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Sic transit . . .
>
> Hal
>
> "Publicity is like eating peanuts. Once you start
> you can't stop."
> --Andy Warhol
>
> Halvard Johnson
> ================
> [log in to unmask]
> http://sites.google.com/site/halvardjohnson/Home
> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
>
>> xA
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 3:13 AM, Douglas Barbour
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> > Reading this & LeGuin, one can understand her worry, & many others'; but
>> for
>> > a relatively little known poet, it may be less bothersome a question. I
>> > mean, you, Alison, have your fantasy novels to worry about, but many of
>> us
>> > have a few collections of poems, & in my case, I confess, only some
>> hundreds
>> > of copies of all of the out there.
>> >
>> > I get the worry, especially about the end-run around copyright, & the
>> > refusal of LeGuin & others, to join, but I'm not sure it matters,
>> finally,
>> > to someone like me, one way or the other....
>> >
>> > Doug
>> > On 22-Jan-10, at 10:05 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
>> >
>> >> ...Still not sure whether to opt in or not. Either option strikes me
>> >> as unsatisfactory.
>> >>
>> >> From the US authors' petition:
>> >>
>> >> "The “opt-out” clause in the Settlement is most disturbing:
>> >>
>> >> First, it seems unfair that, by the terms of the class-action
>> >> settlement, authors can officially present objections to the Court
>> >> only by being “opted in” to the settlement and thereby subjecting
>> >> themselves to its terms.
>> >>
>> >> Second, while the “opt-out” clause appears to offer authors an easy
>> >> way to defend their copyright, in fact it disguises an assault on
>> >> authors’ rights. Google, like any other publisher or entity, should be
>> >> required to obtain permission from the owner to purchase or use
>> >> copyrighted material, item by item.
>> >>
>> >> There is no justification for reversing that rule by forcing copyright
>> >> owners to defend their right against every careless or predatory use
>> >> of the material, thus rendering copyright essentially meaningless.
>> >>
>> >> The United States Department of Justice agrees, having declared that
>> >> Google should negotiate individually with copyright holders. The
>> >> Director of the United States Copyright Office calls the Settlement
>> >> “an end-run around copyright law.”
>> >>
>> >> The free and open dissemination of information and of literature, as
>> >> it exists in our Public Libraries, can and should exist in the
>> >> electronic media. All authors hope for that. But we cannot have free
>> >> and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of
>> >> written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or
>> >> own legitimate right in it. We urge our government and our courts to
>> >> allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms
>> >> of that control"
>> >>
>> >> If you don't have a problem with big corporations making money out of
>> >> your work without your having any control over what they do, I guess
>> >> what Google is doing isn't a problem. Otherwise, the implication are
>> >> worrying.
>> >>
>> >> xA
>> >
>> > Douglas Barbour
>> > [log in to unmask]
>> >
>> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ <http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Edbarbour/>
>> >
>> > Latest books:
>> > Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>> > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>> > Wednesdays'
>> >
>> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>> >
>> > Swept snow, Li Po,
>> > by dawn's 40-watt moon
>> > to the road that hies to office
>> > away from home.
>> >
>> > Lorine Niedecker
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>>
>
--
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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