Re: Google Book Search and fair use

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

I'm 100% with you about not going the route that the recording 
industry (as distinguished from "music publishers") did. But I 
don't share your optimism that consumers will be willing to pay 
if they can get something for nothing.

Could you elaborate on #2? I'm not sure what you mean by 
"acceptable database interpretations of texts." You are aware, I 
assume, the effort to develop the Automated Content Access 
Protocol (http://www.the-acap.org).

Re #3, most publishers I know have been archiving PDFs for years. 
Part of the problem with PDFs is that, once they are out there, 
they can be superdistributed and cut into your market for 
content, as publishers are finding who send out PDFs as review 
copies or as the National Academies Press discovered when it sold 
PDFs of its "open access" book content.

Re #4, what did you have in mind as a "broader understanding"? If 
Google has its way, we'll be living with a copyright regime in 
which "opt out" becomes the rule and an interpretation of 
"transformative use" that will allow judges to find "fair use" 
whenever they decide that some new innovation has "social 
utility," however much it stretches the original meaning of "fair 
use."  Congress already threw open the Pandora's box of "fair 
use" when it incorporated the language of "multiple copies" into 
Section 107, which as experts like Kenny Crews have pointed out 
did change the law despite Congressional protestations to the 
contrary. (In the 51-volume studies of fair use conducted by the 
Copyright Office prior to the debates over copyright leading up 
to the 1976 Act, there was not a single instance of multiple 
copying being considered as "fair use" in the judicial decisions 
surveyed.)

But I'm also 100% with you that "supplying and licensing the use 
of digital texts is the core part" of publishers' mission in the 
21st century. I just think piracy will continue to be a much 
bigger problem moving forward than you do, no matter what 
stratagems publishers undertake to combat it.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>Tackling pirates once they have emerged is one thing. Creating a
>climate in which pirates are a marginal issue is a better
>solution.
>
>That means creating a copyright environment in which consumer,
>college students and researchers dont even think about 'rolling
>their own'.
>
>I would have some suggestions:
>
>(1) Do not follow the path of the music publishers, who buried
>their heads in the sand and opposed or ignored every new use,
>every new technical development.
>
>(2) Devise a much better rubric, and devise an equivalent of
>robots.txt which allows and encourages acceptable database
>interpretations of texts.
>
>(3) Reguire database implementations to use and register their
>use of publisher supplied PDFs. Google should not be creating
>their own inferior PDFs of books published in the last 12 years
>because publishers should have been archiving these PDFs
>
>(4) Encourage and define a broader understanding of 'fair use'
>(ie 'embrace and extend the valuable concept of fair use rather
>than fight it all the way')
>
>That is enough by way of suggestions to keep several working
>parties busy for years, but the key change is one of 'attitude'
>in which publishers must recognise that creating, supplying and
>licensing the use of digital texts is the core part of their
>mission in 21st C. Not something to be pushed away and ignored
>for as long as possible.
>
>Adam
>
>
>On 11 Jul 2008, at 23:07, Sandy Thatcher wrote:
>
>>  Ok, point well taken, but what is your solution? Pirates,
>>  especially those offshore, are not likely to respond to any "opt
>>  out" requests either, and already there is plenty of such book
>>  piracy going on. Just ask the AAP task force that has been
>>  monitoring this. Or read the IIPA Special 301 report on IP
>>  enforcement in China. I suppose for us university presses there
>>  is some consolation in the fact that the monographs we publish
>>  are of interest to so few people worldwide that pirates don't
>>  bother to waste their time on them, but concentrate on commercial
>>  best sellers and textbooks instead.
>>
>>>  Sandy, my point hinges on a distinction between digital copies
>>>  ofa printed page and digital copies of a text. What is
>>>  significantabout the Google process is that they are making
>>>  copies of thetext, as well as copies of the page (they give the
>>>  copy of thepage back to the library, but they keep for
>>>  themselves the muchmore valuable 'interpreted' digital copy of
> >> the text). There arelots of ways of producing useful digital
> >> copies of a text, butmost of the efficient ones use an
> >> electronic file as the source(or something similar). This
> >> copying can be managed by thepublisher or the rights holder (and
>>>  publishers are rightly quiteconcerned over the distribution of
>>>  the PDF file).  Google for thelibrary project has not gone to
>>>  publishers for 'source files fromthe text' they have generated
>>>  their own digital copies(interpretations -- and with mistakes)
>>>  of original texts. TheGoogle process requires a lot of
>>>  investment and a big softwaresystem. But disseminated low-cost
>>>  ways of digitizing texts arecoming.
>>>
>>>  What happened to music about 30 years ago, and is now starting
>>>  tohappen with books, is that it is quite feasible to produce
>>>  usefulcopies from the physical product. You dont need the source
>>>  file.I predict that there will soon be lots of ways of
>>>  producing(image scan->OCR->text database) usable digital copies of
>>>  anyprinted text. The chances are someone is working on how to dothis
>>>  with an iPhone right now. Point the iPhone at your book,flip the
>>>  pages, and *hey presto* you have your enhanced textdatabase,
>>>  accessible from and fed by your iPhone.
>>>
>>>  CDs still have the rubric (similar to that which you find onbooks)
>>>  that "Unauthorised copying, duplication, hiring,broadcasting ... etc
>>>  is prohibited." But nobody (including allthe book publishers of my
>>>  acquaintance) ever seeks authorisationbefore copying for their iPod,
>>>  their home music centre, or beforesundry other things that may or
>>>  may not be authorised by themusic publishers. Because copying the
>>>  physical copy is so easy(and so useful) music companies have had to
>>>  abandon the fictionof opt in permissions for copying music. They
>>>  still print therubric on the sleeve of the CD, but I bet they dont
>>>  get manyrequests for digital copies from end-users.
>>>
>>>  If book publishers judge that maintaining the fiction of an 'optin'
>>>  permissions system will work when it is so easy and so usefulto make
>>>  databases of books from physical volumes, they have arude shock
>>>  coming.
>>>
>>>  Adam