The Author’s Guild is suing Google over its Google Print project. Discussion of this case has focused on whether the Guild is damaging its members’ interests (should the Guild sue Google?) and whether Google can mount a successful fair use defense (will the Guild win?). The underlying assumption being that the Guild is stupid to sue, as it may very well win; whereas Google Print is good for its members, the authors, as it makes the Long Tail accessible. A win for the Guild would in effect be a loss for its members, many believe.

Some commentaries, however, suggest indirectly that the Author’s Guild is not as stupid as it seems, and is attacking the Long Tail with purpose, although perhaps not with conscious intention.

The key phrase is “orphan works”. There are many works in the Long Tail of books that are no longer being published. There are also many works in the Long Tail that are being published, but are unsuccessful in being sold. The first group is competing for attention with the second. But Google Print doesn’t discriminate between the two; it offers access to them both.

Let’s review the commentaries.

First, there was Tim O’Reilly, who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, and who noted that an important paragraph was struck from the piece, namely:

Google is also solving a huge problem for the publishing industry. Because no one knows who owns many of the works in question, Google’s innovative deal with libraries is the only practical approach. It sweeps up all the loose ends of forgotten rights and ignored works. As the public discovers the value of these works, publishers and authors are incentivized to track down and assert their ownership in order to opt-in to the revenue sharing offered by the Google Print service.

A day later, somebody using the handle NigelJohnstone commented at Slashdot:

They obviously want an ‘opt-in’ system, because that reduces the number of books competing to just the current commercial books, and removes possible public domain, orphan works and smaller publishers authors.

Joe Public on the other hand, is best served by ‘opt-out’ because that includes orphaned works and possibly public domain books.

Regardless of whether the last commenter possesses some real insights on why the Guild does what it does, he clearly establishes what some of the Guild’s members would call “motive” in their line of business.

Common sense dictates and scientific research suggests that there is a power curve in popularity of not just books, but also authors. That is to say, in all probability a minute number of authors get rich off their writing activities, very few manage to eke out a living, and most of them need to get a real job to pay for their writing activities.

In a perfect world, authors get connected to every party that is interested in their books. In reality, even some popular authors prefer to give their books away through the net, because this is not a perfect world (see under Publicity and further). But even if we, mankind, somehow managed to at least make it possible for readers to find the books they’re interested in–say, by having some sort of search engine scan in as many books as possible and add those texts to their database–there still is a limited amount of attention any given reader can pay to finding and reading books.

And so the suggestion that the Author’s Guild does not want readers to have access to the Long Tail may not be borne in fact, but it certainly seems plausible. O’Reilly suggests that publishers still use this increased attention to rescue their orphan works from the pits of oblivion, but the Guild would obviously only encourage such a plan if it felt that its living members would benefit. And those members would be competing with their dead brethern.

If anything, the Guild’s behavior says something about the length of copyright terms. From a very close-minded perspective, long copyright terms only help protect a book publishing cartel when access to the public domain and to obscure, out-of-print, dead authors is limited as much as possible.

2 COMMENTS

  1. […] Every year at   SXSW Interactive two or three memes bubble to the surface. Here’s what I’m hearing  this year: Can we trust them? And how much should we share? “They” are the big web companies and search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) who are offering a panoply of useful services for free. Google’s mantra, “don’t be evil” is supposed to reassure, but people here (who are both content creators and consumers)  feel uncomfortable placing their trusts in companies who ultimately are about making money. In a panel about the book digitalization project, representatives from Microsoft and Google were on hand to talk about how they intend to proceed.  (This project has aroused a lot of controversy relating to copyright and fair use; for an introduction, see this teleread article). Google,  in conjunction with college libraries,  has been scanning out-of-print books from college libraries (even without receiving  explicit permission of publishers). Google claims “fair use,” and that’s a debatable point although Google has the incentive (and  legal resources) to assert these rights. That’s not the point. Librarians/educators and geeks here  have a problem with Google’s login and tracking. “Why do I need to login to my Google account when I want to read an online book?” one audience member asks.  “Isn’t that an invasion of my privacy?” […]

  2. […] The Google case is different, though, because Google is something that most authors will never ever approach even remotely, namely filthy stinking rich. Authors can get a direct income from sueing Google via a court-issued fine and may prefer that over waiting for the extra income on book sales that the Google index might generate. That authors can abuse copyright law to blackmail is because copyright law is so broad; if it did not cover all copying activities, or had exemptions for indexing, Google would not be in this trouble, and the authors sueing the company would go to jail, where they belong. […]

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