Authors Without A Yacht (AWaY) discussion
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Authors Guild sues on behalf of "orphans"
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Rowena, Good Job!Is this in addition to the pending U.S. federal suit Google has been fighting for the last six years? Does it cover the same institutions and incidents? I notice the Authors Guild president quoted. They're a principal in the already pending case.
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Do share the info, Larry. Too many people are likely to believe that if a University does something, it must be legal.
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http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
Rowena wrote: "Yes, I believe so because AG sent out the news yesterday.Do share the info, Larry. Too many people are likely to believe that if a University does something, it must be legal."
Ditto libraries and librarians who frequently use the argument that "we've always done it that way. In future I'm going to be much less visible on Goodreads. Part of my initial desire to be on this "social" network was to assist those who are serious about becoming skilled writers. Instead I've found few who fit that profile and an overwhelming majority of wannabees who only seek to brag and claim they are writers and authors without going through the learning curve and acquiring the necessary skill sets.
As they gain ascendancy they will likely destroy the future of EBooks and traditional publishers will return to their business as usual methods of treating their product creators as indentured serfs. It will be a truly sad day for professional writers and those who truly love and devote their lives to the craft of writing.
I've had it. I'm gaining nothing but angst from my efforts. Also another decline in my health. Time to return to concentrating on my writing and family life.
I'll be lurking. :-)
As a result of the new lawsuit I posted the following comments, consolidated below, on Publishers Weekly’s daily newsletter site.Libraries are doing what they always have. NO, they're not. Google changed the game and libraries are colluding with them to violate copyright protections.
According to Wikipedia: "The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier.[1] Copyright protection for works published prior to January 1, 1978, was increased by 20 years to a total of 95 years from their publication date.
This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act,[2] effectively "froze" the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules."
I assume you're a librarian. If so, I fail to understand how you could NOT know the copyright law.
Also, libraries are NOT an author's biggest customer. They only buy bestsellers, not mid-list authors.
You also say: "Without libraries, only the wealthy could afford to read. Do you REALLY want to go back to that kind of social divide? Actually, that's not true. Many fine books are available for purchase as EBooks for less than half the price of harcovers and many public domain classics are now available FREE as EBooks from Amazon. Also, it's about the copyright. Without authors libraries would cease to exist. Without royalties, authors would cease to write. Catch 22. Read it sometime.
If anyone still thinks libraries are not involved in pirating books to the financial detriment of authors, they have only to read this story and a similar one posted on the Publishers' Lunch Newsletter. Google and the libraries want to circumvent copyright law and avoid paying royalties.
You're right, publishers are acting like the music industry. The uncontrolled music piracy almost destroyed the music industry which lost (estimated) billions of dollars. If artists of any sort can't make a sufficient living from their works why would they bother. Does everyone really want to see art, music and books disappear?? That can happen if people continue to steal intellectual property. Such theft is currently estimated at more than 25% of all works.
If authors stop publishing works because of intellectual piracy, all libraries will have are dusty, out of date, reference books and copies of Little Women.
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I hope your excellent post survives censorship there, it will here!
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http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
Rowena wrote: "Apparently, Larry, anything even remotely contentious is being removed from the PW site which is discussing University libraries and their mischaracterization of works by living, easy to find, auth..."Rowena, thanks. Actually, I somehow achieved "top commentator" status on PW, so my stuff usually survives. If you think PW is bad, the Publishers' Lunch newsletter appears to be written by a rotating group of executives from the Big Six houses -- complete with poor spelling and numerous typos. :-)
Rowena wrote: "Interesting reactions from librarians who applaud the U of M and deplore Scott Turow's defense of living authors who are easily located, but whose rights the U of M overlooked.http://www.publisher..."
Yup. Guess they never heard of the ISBN registry or Ingrams to locate authors. Then, of course, there are those Internet search engine thingies. Oops, that may be too advanced for them. :-) ROTFLMAO!!
As posted on a few other sites where I'm still welcome:
Part of my initial desire to be on this "social" network was to assist those who are serious about becoming skilled writers. Instead I've found few who fit that profile and an overwhelming majority of wannabees who only seek to brag and claim they are writers and authors without going through the learning curve and acquiring the necessary skill sets.
As they gain ascendancy they will likely destroy the future of EBooks and traditional publishers will return to their business as usual methods of treating their product creators as indentured serfs. It will be a truly sad day for professional writers and those who truly love and devote their lives to the craft of writing.
I've had it. I'm gaining nothing but angst from my efforts. Also another decline in my health. Time to return to concentrating on my writing and family life.
This afternoon, we filed suit against HathiTrust, the University of Michigan and four other universities over their storage and use of millions of copyright-protected books. The press release follows.
AUTHORS AND AUTHORS’ GROUPS FROM AUSTRALIA, QUEBEC, THE U.K., AND U.S. SUE HATHITRUST, THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, AND FOUR OTHER U.S. UNIVERSITIES FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
Digital Files Provided by Google at Issue, As Plaintiffs Seek to Impound Unauthorized Scans of 7 Million Copyright-Protected Books, Pending Congressional Action
NEW YORK – The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois (UNEQ), and eight individual authors have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court against HathiTrust, the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, and Cornell University. Plaintiff authors include children’s book author and illustrator Pat Cummings, novelists Angelo Loukakis, Roxana Robinson, Danièle Simpson, and Fay Weldon, poet André Roy, Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning biographer T.J. Stiles.
The universities obtained from Google unauthorized scans of an estimated 7 million copyright-protected books, the rights to which are held by authors in dozens of countries. The universities have pooled the unauthorized files in a repository organized by the University of Michigan called HathiTrust. In June, Michigan announced plans to permit unlimited downloads by its students and faculty members of copyright-protected works it deems “orphans” according to rules the school has established. Other universities joined in Michigan’s project in August.
The first set of so-called orphans, 27 works by French, Russian, and American authors, are scheduled to be released to an estimated 250,000 students and faculty members on October 13th. An additional 140 books, including works in Spanish, Yiddish, French, and Russian, are to be released starting in November.
“This is an upsetting and outrageous attempt to dismiss authors’ rights,” said Angelo Loukakis, executive director of the Australian Society of Authors. “Maybe it doesn’t seem like it to some, but writing books is an author’s real-life work and livelihood. This group of American universities has no authority to decide whether, when or how authors forfeit their copyright protection. These aren’t orphaned books, they’re abducted books.”
“I was stunned when I learned of this,” said Danièle Simpson, president of UNEQ. “How are authors from Quebec, Italy or Japan to know that their works have been determined to be ‘orphans’ by a group in Ann Arbor, Michigan? If these colleges can make up their own rules, then won’t every college and university, in every country, want to do the same?”
The complaint also questions the security of the 7 million unauthorized digital files. The numbers are staggering. The universities have, without permission, digitized and loaded onto HathiTrust’s online servers thousands of editions, in various translations, of works by Simone de Beauvoir, Italo Calvino, Bernard Clavel, Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Günter Grass, Peter Handke, Michel Houellebecq, Clarice Lispector, Mario Vargas Llosa, Herta Müller, Haruki Murakami, Kenzaburō Ōe, Octavio Paz, and Jose Saramago, among countless other authors. Works from nearly every nation have been digitized. HathiTrust’s databases house more than 65,000 works published in the year 2001, for example, including thousands of works published that year in China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, and the U.K., and hundreds from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, The Netherlands, The Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam.
“These books, because of the universities’ and Google’s unlawful actions, are now at needless, intolerable digital risk,” said Authors Guild president Scott Turow. “Even if it weren’t for this preposterous, ad-hoc initiative, we’d have a major problem with the digital repository. Authors shouldn’t have to trust their works to a group that’s making up the rules as it goes along.”
Google’s library scanning project is already the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit in New York. A status conference in that case is scheduled before Judge Denny Chin this Thursday, September 15.
Attorneys Edward Rosenthal and Jeremy Goldman of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz are representing plaintiffs.
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