Wall Street Journal on Google Books, orphaned works
The Wall Street Journal has a piece on the Google Book Search settlement. While the article briefly mentions the complaints from authors and librarians over the terms of the deal, it largely focuses on the problem of orphaned works.
The problem is "orphan works," a phrase that refers to books still under copyright but no longer supported by publishing efforts. These books are in a netherworld where the rights holders cannot easily be found by anyone who wants to distribute the books, because no ownership records are kept. This empty property right is the ultimate fate of most books published in the U.S., even now that digital copies are so easy to maintain, search and share. The Google settlement thus brings back millions of books that had been lost.
It talks about Lawrence Lessig’s suggestion that Congress should return to a periodical registration renewal requirement, so that authors who did not renew their works would let them fall into the public domain. Says Lessig, "The consequence very quickly would be a registry with a clear list of property rights owners.”
On one hand, giving Google exclusive access to all these out-of-print works (meaning that any would-be competitor must 1) shell out the capital to scan copies of the book itself and 2) wait to get sued like Google so it can forge a similar settlement) seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, Google did put in the time and effort to scan and index those books on its own, and the availability of orphaned works will benefit the public greatly.
It would be best if Congress could just fix our broken copyright system, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I have to admit I am of a mixed mind about the Google Settlement myself. On the one hand, it does seem to give Google an awful lot of control of information. On the flip side, every time the terms of copyright are increased, it increases the likelihood that additional works will end up orphaned and essentially abandoned by future generations long before they enter the public domain.
Mind you, this is not simply a question of books no one cares about. In my experience, important books by important niche authors often end up sitting out of print for years before someone decides to print them again. Its gets even worse if the author dies, or the current publisher goes out of business, etc.
To put it in simple terms, copyright has stopped serving the needs of the public good and no are serving the good of corporations.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
In the past, orphaned works were an issue. But are they really a problem today and going forward? Authors whose rights have reverted can seek another publisher or ePublish themselves. Several of the books I publish were formerly published by large publishers, orphaned, and re-issued by BooksForABuck.com with the authors’ permission/support. Assuming books are orphaned because the initial publisher is no longer actively marketing them seems dangerous.
Rob Preece
Publisher
August 18th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
And if the author is dead? Or what if you wanted to publish a book but couldn’t track down the author or his heirs? Or what if the heirs were split on whether or not they were willing to republish (or under what terms they were willing to republish).
I agree that ebooks and print on demand make it easier for a book to stay available to the public than it was a few decades ago. But that being said, I would guess that the majority of books that were published 10 years ago are out of print and many of them may never be reissued in any form.
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Bill