Brin effectively defends Google Books
Sergey Brin takes to the op-ed page of the New York Times to defend Google’s efforts to digitize all the world’s books, whatever the thoughts of each work’s copyright holder. I’ve been critical of Google’s pre-emptive approach, which essentially amounts to, “We’ll ignore your copyright unless you take the initiative to bring it to our attention,” but Brin makes a good case.He begins his column, titled “A Library to Last Forever,” with this quote: “The fundamental reasons why the electric car has not attained the popularity it deserves are (1) The failure of the manufacturers to properly educate the general public regarding the wonderful utility of the electric; (2) The failure of [power companies] to make it easy to own and operate the electric by an adequate distribution of charging and boosting stations. The early electrics of limited speed, range and utility produced popular impressions which still exist.”
Brin writes, “This quotation would hardly surprise anyone who follows electric vehicles. But it may be surprising to hear that in the year when it was written thousands of electric cars were produced and that year was nearly a century ago. This appeared in a 1916 issue of the journal Electrical World…. It may seem strange to look back a hundred years on a topic that is so contemporary, yet I often find that the past has valuable lessons for the future. In this case, I was lucky - electric vehicles were studied and written about extensively early in the 20th century, and there are many books on the subject from which to choose. Because books published before 1923 are in the public domain, I am able to view them easily.”
Most books written after 1923, Brin writes, “…quickly disappear into a literary black hole.” If they survive, they are accessible only to “…the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries.” He continues, “As the years pass, contracts get lost and forgotten, authors and publishers disappear, the rights holders become impossible to track down.” In essence, out-of-print books become abandoned property.
Brin reports that in response to a lawsuit by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, the parties were able to work together to devise a settlement that’s a win-win for authors, publishers and Google. The agreement makes millions of out-of-print books available while permitting rights holders to come forth at any time to set fees or withdraw the works from Google Books. And it accumulates revenue for orphan works whose owners have not yet been found.
That seems fair. I’m generally skeptical of “we’ll assume you’re in until you actively opt out” schemes, but it seems Google Books has indeed come up with a win-win solution.
