Google's Print Project

[stacer]

What's a luddite?

[42]

Luddite--n.

1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
2. One who opposes technical or technological change.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=luddite

[Entsuropi]

It's a term still in usage here in the UK.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

It's still in usage here, too. I just used it.

[stacer]

I've heard it before, but I can never remember what it means. Blind spot.

[Parker]

I want to be a luddite.  (Non practicing, of course.  Can you be a "jack luddite"?)

[Entsuropi]

Yes but saint, your an English major. You don't count.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Yes but saint, your an English major. You don't count.

Well, so am I, but I learned the word from a Doctor Who episode, where I picked up a lot of vocabulary.  So I guess that just throws it back to the Brits.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yes but saint, your an English major. You don't count.

<-- not an English major.
<-- took a total 5 courses from the English department (Shakespeare, SF, Creative Writing, Myth, and Film as Literature)

[Firemeboy]

But the fact is STILL that they are making a copy of a book without the publisher or author's permission. You can sell the book, but making a copy, especially a copy that changes owners, is a violation of copyright.

Perhaps it's time to change the 200 year old copyright laws, in light of new technology.

I'm all for Google doing this, and I'm also all for moving stuff into the public domain much, much sooner than it is already.  It seems like we could come up with some method that would both compensate a creator of a work, and yet still allow that work to get into as many hands as need/want it.

It's going to happen sooner or later.  We are already seeing free collaborative efforts providing just as good a service as the 'paid for' services.  Linux, Wikipedia, Flickr, Creative Commons, Gimp, Open Office, Audacity, Firefox, Opera, the list goes on and on and on.  

Look at some of the things going on over at MIT.  The faculty asked the school to please allow them to put their course material on the web, to share it with the world.  

I'm all for it.

[The Lost One]

Copyrights use to only be for 50 years, until the copyright on "Mickey Mouse" was about to expire and then Disney lobbyed to have copyrights expanded to 70 years, which congress did. The point of this is that copyrights are an artificial creation of the law. No one has an inherent right to profit from their own work.

Internationally, copyrights are very difficult enforce (see &#8220;The International Threat to Intellectual Property Rights through Emerging Markets&#8221;
Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 22, pp. 213-243 (Winter 2004)) and even in the United States, a copyright is not enforced unless action is taken by the author to enforce the copyright. I'm not an IP lawyer but, Google may have several legal argument to avoid liability. Ones that I can think of are latches, waiver, and alteration of use/media. Besides, in a class action, there must be a "class certification" and that can easily be botched. Another option is that Google might get legislative reform like Disney did.

[stacer]

I'm all for easy access to public domain, but you have to think about the people who write and publish for a living: this is what we *do*. We won't do it if we can't make a living at it. I'm talking about publishing, NOT movies and music--both systems which could use a bit of reform to compensate the artists more fairly, but the general principle behind it I still support--but I just don't want to get into that side of it. I'm talking about publishing, a business which doesn't have a high profit margin. Your average author and editor are not making millions off one or two books--let alone, sometimes, even a full-time living.

They (we) have the right to fight for our intellectual property rights and to have them protected. Yeah, the law might need to change, but I would say to be more clear that this is unacceptable, rather than letting Google just do what it wants and hope authors don't notice that Google is copying their work.

[Firemeboy]

If they did, it would be a step in the right direction, IMHO.

A good article for anybody who is interested in this subject  can be found here.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I hope to avoid a "me too" statement, but yeah, Stacer's got it

By making ALL information "free" than you will reduce the amount and quality of the creative works made in our society. I have no problem with "mickey mouse" effect changes to IP law. I'm not sure why people keep freaking out about it, actually.

Things like Wikipedia are different, ONLY because the people who own the copyrights have VOLUNTARILY put their work int he public domain early. That's fine. If that's what you want to do, I commend you. But reducing copyright lengths? Sorry. The average person LIVES longer. A guy publishes a book at age 23, let's say. He'll only be 73 when 50 years are up. You're saying that you want him to lose the right to make money off something he created while he's still alive? Heck, it's not unusual for someone to live to 93 now. Lifespan will probably continue to lengthen.

As for it not being an inherant right, I disagree. Just because there were no laws protecting it until comparatively recently doesn't mean it isn't inherent. SLavery was legal for a long time. Does this mean that black people doen't have an inherent right to not be held as slaves?

I'll accept that it's not a "NATURAL" right, but it is certainly inherent. Especially when you look at it from a capitalism perspective. You have the right, in democracy, to make a living off your labor and what you create. Copyright law is designed to protect that right. Removing that simply removes the creator's ability to earn a living off his own work.

[Skar]

No one has an inherent right to profit from their own work.

You're kidding right?  

When you get to brass tacks, no one has an inherent right to anything.  "Rights" are a construct of law.  Even the "rights" listed in the Declaration of Independence and the "Bill" of rights mean nothing when not backed up by law and the enforcement thereof.  So in that sense I suppose you have a point.

But by that reasoning, neither do you have an inherent "right" not to be murdered by me. Nor an inherent "right" to expect your neighbors to refrain from raiding your fridge or driving off in your car.  All such "rights" are actually privileges you pay for with your taxes and which are protected by the organs of civilization.  I'm all for most of the privileges afforded me by the society I live in.  The other choices are anarchy and totalitarianism.  No thank you.

While I'm all for Google's concept, it would be neat to be able to search everything that has ever been written and I'd be happy to wade through advertising aimed at me to get to do so, I'm not willing to have Google suddenly, without my consent, become defacto owner of all my intellectual property.