Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales

eldavojohn writes "A few book publishers are actually thanking Google for an apparent rise in sales due to Google's scan plan. Google is busy defending itself against authors and publishers that have brought lawsuits for ignoring copyrights. The director of the Oxford University Press said, 'Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers.' It seems to work in favor of the smaller publishers: 'Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the 'buy this book' Google link.' Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?"

Yes.

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?

Yes -- both.

The fact that Google's book search increases book sales in no way diminishes the fact that Google is violating the authors/publishers copyright. If those publishers are intelligent, they will give permission for Google to do this; but they have a right to not give that permission.

Re:Yes.

...but they have a right to not give that permission.

Incorrect. They were granted the privilege.

Re:Yes.

If they are using this privilege we have granted them to line their own pocketses at the expense of the advance of science and/or art... seems it's our duty to revoke the copyright we have granted them.

Re:Yes.

Precisely. It IS our duty. But like many duties we have to protect our freedoms, we have forsaken them. We have abdicated our authority to incompetent morons. And now we will pay the price.

Re:Yes.

I disagree.

Greed is the reason so much of past art exists.

But many people do it for the love of it.

In a world with the internet, those people are able to do it, do it right, do it cheaply, and get both the word and the finished product out to the masses easily. This means that the amount of content without the need for copyright is growing exponentially - and while some of it sucks, a lot of it is very good.

Just look at the Creative Commons database.

Should copyright be abolished? Hells naw. Is it infected with "It's mine and mine forever" syndrome? Unfortunately, yes. Maybe copyright needed to be 95 years at some point. It doesn't now. It shouldn't even be past its original 14-28 year limit.

And, just so's you know, I don't believe it should be transferable, or be able to be owned by a non-individual (read: company). Though, my reasons for these are partially philosphical, and only partially based on policy physics.

The reason: if a group with enough cash to be an influencial lobbyist posesses a copyright, it is in their best interests to expand copyright until it's doing more harm than good, as we have seen in every major industrialized company.

Want proof of harm? Look at the popularity of illegal filesharing. It exists, continues to exist, and will exist for a very long time, because there is a demand for it - or more specifically, for content - stretching back as far as 95 years - that can be obtained by illegal sharing. The demand for old IP combined with profitability of old IP is not an incentive towards creativity; it's incentive for stagnancy. How many rereleases of "Snow White" has Disney spent time and money on, for example?

Remember that IP law is there to ensure continued creativity of the content and scientific industries. If it's doing something other than that, you can be assured that it's promoting economic inefficiency (money going where it's not needed, in this case).

If, on the other hand, after 14 years, copyrighted works are released into the public domain, illegal sharing no longer has the kind of demand it once had. It will still be the go-to source for anything older than 14 years, but people are happy to buy the more recent stuff; most people assume that if it comes from the source, it's of higher quality.

The other bit that gives me the non-transferrable and non-individual restrictions is artist compensation. Look at what the RIAA's member companies do to their artists, and tell me that RIAA ownership of copyright is even close to reasonable. The artists get a nickel, and the recording industry gets the lion's share. Spun the other way around, where the artist owns his work, the record company would be forced to properly compensate their artists, or the artists would walk, taking their entire library of content with them.

Like I said, philosophical and policy based.

Re:Yes.

O'Laochdha wrote:

Privilege, privilege, it's all privilege. The privilege of free speech, the privilege of property ownership, etc...there are those against both. The government protects your right to the proceeds of your creations - that makes it as much a right as anything.

Another incorrect assertion. Rights are things that we accept exist regardless of anything the government or anyone else wants to say about it. Copyright is not one of these things. Free speech is a constitutional right, and as such falls between the two areas. It took the constitution to grant this creation, but as we hold it higher than the government or anyone else, its still a right. Property ownership is as a natural right -- almost all creatures, not just humans, have this sense of what is 'theirs' and what isn't. Locke would say that the forest belongs to no one, but once he has felled a tree, the log is his.

Privileges are things that exist only when the government or another higher power says you can have it. Copyright falls under this category, despite the presence of 'right' in the compound. You'll note that before copyright existed, many forms of art and publication still existed -- but Plato never enjoyed the privilege of copyright.

In short, rights define the rules around which a government may exist. The government defines the rules around which privileges may exist. There is a definite chain of command here, and rights are most certainly at the top of the list.

~Rebecca

Re:Yes.

If the government wasn't there, I could say whatever I pleased.

Yes, and I could put a bullet in your brainpan with impunity.

If the government wasn't there, I could not stop you from copying what I wrote.

But I could stop you from copying what I wrote, by force if necessary.

Which then, is a right, and which then is a privilege granted by the government?

Without government you would only have the "rights" that you could defend for yourself. If someone bigger, stronger, and meaner came along your "right" to life, liberty, and property would disappear completely. The difference between what you believe to be a natural right and what you would label mere privilege exists only in your mind. Society determines what "rights" its members have, as is evidenced by the fact that different societies have different sets of "rights."

Re:Yes.

Bah. Read this comment from the last Google Book Search Slashdot discussion. [slashdot.org] It boils down to the fact that not all copying is infringement. "For example, the courts have ruled that it is perfectly legal to copy every image you can find on the internet, and store those images, for the purpose of providing a thumbnail image of those images for profit. That is because what is being sold is meta-data about where you can find an image, not the images themselves. The courts have also ruled that making low quality copies of porn images and making them available is illegal, because the intent was for people to just look at the images and the effect upon the market was to deprive the copyright holders of business."

At least some publishers believe it increases sales, and it's certainly not a clear cut case of copyright infringement.

Re:Yes.

oh my god. what a clever idea! why didn't Google think of that [google.com]?

obviously this idea simply isn't enough. Publishers don't care that their copyright is being violated, they just want some extra money without doing much work.

Re:Yes.

Does flipping through a book in the bookstore violate copyright? No. Any publisher that doesn't want people reading books they haven't bought had better not sell them in stores or sell them to libraries. Holy crap, I'm surprised the library system hasn't been either sued or legislated out of existence, due to the impact their socialist practices have had on book sales.

Take copyright out of the question. Not wanting people to preview your material is stupid business practice, and bad for consumers and the public.

Google Book Search provides online what book stores already can in RL.

Re:Yes.

Publishing companies aren't known to be the smartest bunch on the block when it comes to technology. Does anyone else remember the general outcry in the late 90's when publishers thought e-books were going to take over within a few years? A lot of the profit gained in book publishing is from the actual printing process -- e-books threatened to reduce their markup potential. Publishers are worried that the gain in sale from people previewing their book won't outweigh the people previewing it and declining to buy such crap. Walking into a bookstore has an emotional tie -- you want a book, so you browse until you find something, even if it wasn't what you intended to buy. Online, however, there isn't emotional attachment (if there is, it is more likely to be attached to the webiste moreso than anything else). If you don't find something you like, you won't buy. Or so the publishers think.

On the contrary, I'd assume the higher number of people previewing it would, for good books, increase sales. Impulse buying is far more rampant in online shopping.

One thing that would probably solve the issue is allowing publishers a hand in the process. Give them certain leeway as to what pages are available as a preview. That way, they can pick the good parts of the book and not reveal any plot. I don't think they should have pure control over it, though, so maybe 50% chosen pages vs. 50% random/Google pages would be a good mix. Google, to appease publishers, could provide data back to them. They could even show different previews to each user and give them stats back of how each preview affected the buyers as well as demographics related to the sales. That's something a conventional book store cannot provide!

Re:Yes.

Google Book Search provides online what book stores already can in RL.

I'm sure copyright holders agree with you. That's why they want google to pay for their copy, just as bookstores and libraries are required to pay for each copy in their inventories.

Re:Yes.

It is prudent to remember in the case of bookstores that they buy the copies wholesale from the publisher. At that point they are the bookstore's property to do with as they wish - obviously, most of them choose to let you browse the product.

But the publishers aren't selling them "in stores" a la consignment. They are selling them *to* the stores. They've already made their money, and are no longer part of the equation.

Libraries are a bit trickier, but for the most part they buy their books, too, and so again, what is their complaint? One particular copy can cycle itself through the system as much as possible.

The issue here is that Google has not bought these books, and even if they had, are they allowed to make a digital copy available (such that infinite copies can be made.) The first issue is easy - Google ought to pay these publishers either a licensing fee or some one-time fee to display their product freely. And Google ought to do that as goodwill, because they are essentially acting as a bookstore, but on consignment instead - which is where the legal ambiguity steps in. If Google acted more as your typical brick and mortar bookstore, this wouldn't be an issue at all.

Actually, bookstores *are* consignment shops

FYI, bookstores "buy" books from publishers with the right to return them for full credit if they don't sell. So in real life, in the end, publishers supply them on consignment.

Not only that, authors share the risk. They only get royalties on books that customers actually buy, not on copies *shipped to* bookstores.

Even more fun, the bookstore gets as much of the total retail price of the book -- about 50% -- as the publisher and author combined.

It's a sick system, especially for the authors, which is why so many of us (I've written three books) are starting to look into alternative publishing and distribution channels.

- Robin

Re:Yes.

Imagine if a friend asked you to search through a book for him and let him know what you found. Would this also be a violation? Chances are, you'd only quote a paragraph or so back to him - Google quotes even less of the book.

The difference is, your friend does not increase his market share every time he lets someone search through a book. Neither is your friend selling advertising on the walls of the room into which he escorts you to take his book. Nor is he capturing your search request in a database for cross-reference with other search requests from people in your zipcode later on.

Google profits from your search. Your friend allows your search out of charity.

If Google wants to include my copyrighted content as part of their profit-making venture, they can pay me. I'm a poor starving writer (or maybe I'm Stephen King, it doesn't matter), and Google is a super-mega-global-corporation (or maybe their a mom-and-pop store, it doesn't matter), and if they want to use my stuff to make some scratch, I'll take my percentage, thanks very much. If my price is too high, we can negotiate. If it's still too high, we can walk away and talk about doing business another day. That's Business. And Google is in Business.

Google plays up the peace-love-understanding-happy-hippie-new-age-new- media dance, and it was really cute, back in the day. But the Piper's arrived, and just in time, too, cuz a whole generation of kids was just starting to believe that "do no evil" thing somehow exempted Google from obeying laws they thought were old-fashioned (i.e., prevented them from making money).

Or?

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?"

Why does everyone think this is an "or" question? Copyright isn't about generating profits, for the copyright holder or anyone else. It's about control of making copies. Money is a common motive for wanting such control, but is almost irrelevant to the law.

Re:Or?

Of course, there is fair use, which is all that google is doing. They have not exposed 100% of the writing.

And here is the rub.

While google is only displaying excerpts, they are making digital copies of the entire book to drive their searches. And those copies are likely dupicated multiple times within their infrastructure.

If they only took excerpts and made them searchable, then they would likely be well within fair use and the authors and publishers couldn't touch them. But they are doing much more than that.

This is the same legal hole that MP3.com found themselves in several years ago. They were providing streaming music to people who could prove that they already owned the CDs. This way you could listen to your CD collection while at work, etc. (This was pre-iPod). In order to drive this system, however, they made digital copies of tens of thousands of cds. They only made the digital versions available to people who alredy owned the CD, but they were still found to be infringing because they made the copies in their own database in the first place.

Now, if you want my opinion, this is bs, and copyright law and the fair use doctrine needs to be adjusted to allow this kind of use.

Uh,,,, Both

"Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?"

Can't the answer be "both"?

Re:Uh,,,, Both

Can't the answer be "both"?

Yeah, that's why they used OR and not XOR :)

Increase sales or violate IP...

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?

Why is this an "or" question? It can be both, in fact I'm pretty sure it is. This just goes to show that the extremely strict copyright laws we've legislated ourselves into aren't benefiting anyone, including the authors / owners.

both?

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?

It's probably both. But the way US copyright law works, you don't really get a definitive answer anywhere but the courts, and they can pull that "definitive" answer out of their robes.

smaller publishers

It seems to work in favor of the smaller publishers

Which is all the more reason why it needs to be shut down now!

</BigBookCo, Inc.>

TFP poses a false dichotomy

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?

Why must these two points be separate? Is it possible for the search access to both increase sales *and* violate copyright?

After all, that's one of the big questions (if not the biggest) surrounding the RIAA's battles against music file trading...

And here I thought

I thought we were operating from the assumption that programs like this did both.

Coffee Is for Closers!

Why should Google be any different from any other sales "person"? When they actually sell your stuff, they're heroes. When they just give it away for free, or annoy you without selling anything, they're villains.

Google shouldn't be able to transmit copies of content without the copyright holder allowing that, but when they do so and make money for those holders (without reducing money those holders make elsewhere), they won't get many complaints.

Of course, while copyrights stop copying well past the length required to protect the motivation for producing them, and stop the fair uses (including indexing for referrals), it's hard to be sympathetic about violations of what are really "copyprivileges", rather than real "rights".

Yes, but...

Basically, yes, Google is violating the copyrights, when they scan the books in. This is a copyright violation.

This is not, however, what is upsetting the the authors and book publishers. What upsets them is that google is allowing other people to search, which is fairly clearly fair use, given how much is displayed. They want a cut of the money stream, of any possible monetization of their works, even though that is not what copyright entitles them to.

(Counting this as a copyright violation is going to be horrendous once we have AI...)

Can you say "false dichotomy"?

Heh. Here I was all prepared to to point out that the obvious answer is "both", but I noticed that every single reply so far has said the same thing. So rather than be rated redundant, I'll just point out that there is a standard name for this particular bit of illogic.

If authors had any sense, they'd be jumping onto the anti-copyright bandwagon. Such laws were, we're told repeatedly, created to give authors and artists control over their creations, and to guarantee them income from sales. More and more, the actual effect is to take away the creators' control, giving control and profits primarily to their corporate masters.

This story just illustrates that some authors have figured out that it helps to let their readers know what's available. And the copyright question basically asks whether a publisher has the right to block communication between an author and the audience.

Maybe we do need some sort of copyright laws. But authors don't need the current copyright laws. That's what's keeping most of them poor.

The programmer's answer

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?

Yes.

Publishers Thank Google for Book Sales

Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?

When I walk into a bookstore, I can peruse books before buying.

Now, I can peruse books via Google before buying.

In the first, I can physically handle books. In the second, I can electronically handle books.

The only difference I see between the two, is that, via Google, I don't have to leave home to peruse, and buy, books.

Not mutually exclusive points

Copyright was violated for sure, according to the law.

It can be debated whether sales increased or not.

By knowing more about what's in a book readers can make more informed decisions, but that's about it.

But these points are not contradictory.

Glad we all agree

cperciva: "Yes -- both." taustin: "Why does everyone think this is an "or" question?" cataBob: "Can't the answer be "both"?" Skreems: "Why is this an "or" question?" Speare: "It's probably both." Money for Nothin': "Why must these two points be separate?" grasshoppa: "I thought we were operating from the assumption that programs like this did both." Wow, what a debate!

No surprise there

Oh hey, it works just like filesharing giving artists increased publicity and sales, no surprise there.

Here's what google should do;

They should announce that for one month, publishers can choose to give google permission to index their books.

At the end of the month, every publisher that didn't gets dropepd from the index. If they want back in (because, for example, they discover their competition is getting hundreds of click-throughs with 40% or more sales) they have to pay Google either a BIG up-front payment or a percentage of all future sales.

It's funny, but most places make you pay heaps for advertising. Especially for well-targeted and effective advertising that leads to a high percentage of sales. I never understood why google feels they have to give it away free.

A whole encyclopedia?

>'Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its
> encyclopedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing
> in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the 'buy this
> book' Google link.'

Can someone provide a link to this book? I would, oddly enough, like to buy it.

Who cares?

Who cares if it increases their sales? If it does it in a way that's contrary to the author's intent, then copyright law prohibits it. Consider someone who writes a book on the evils of the Internet and prohibits its contents from being shown on the Internet. Why should that hypothetical author accept Google posting their book? What if Google had fewer controls so that the entire book could be copied? Publishers that want Google to index can provide Google a license. Those who don't should be protected by law (and Google's use has serious problems under fair use doctrine, since the copied amount is the entire use, it impacts the marketability of reference works where only a few pages are needed at any time, it can be used to form a collection of works, and it is being commercially exploited.

The slashdottitude of "unauthorized copying of books/music/videos/software is just free marketing" is in direct contradiction to the letter and intent of modern copyright law, and even if it does help sales, that's a decision for the copyright holder to make.

900lb elephant

Google is the new 900lb elephant that's going to get away with a lot of things because of the exposure or money they can bring to people. I guess their do no evil mantra has some post scripts... :-(

Let it be up to each publisher then

So some publishers like Google's "scan" plan while some others don't. Seems to me it's up to Google to get permission from the publishers. Those that like it, (e.g. those cited in the article) will give them the OK; those that don't, won't. Google forcing themselves on publishers that don't like the plan is heavy-handed; typical Google M.O. of late.

Irritating typo

"Do you think that Google's 'sneak peak' search access increases sales or violates copyrights on intellectual property?"

Peek.

well, if you look at it this way

if you were to go into a bookstore, you could just as easily browse through thousands of books and still have your choice as to wether or not to buy them, so if google is providing an atmosphere where you can not only preview the book, but purchase it as well, then i think they should have every right to do so... so long as they are not publishing the ENTIRE contents of the book online without the consent of the owner, after all, would you buy a book online if you didnt know anything more than what is written on the cover?

A more general thought on copyright in this age...

Law has always moved slowly. At least in the US, either a court has to fashion a new interpretation of existing law, one that, according to some august commentators, ought to confine itself to the interstitial space between existing laws, or the federal legislature has to pass, and the president sign, a new law.

The slowness and expense of both of these methods, and more specifically, the lack of technological anticipation in the current copyright (and patent) regimes, make for some interesting times, given the perfect granularity with which digital technology can reproduce most copyrighted works.

Both of the above factors ought to (and in some corners have) given rise to a wholesale re-examination of the purposes and methods of copyright protection in the US. Having worked in one house of the US Federal legislature, I can tell you that is not really one 'corner' where the re-examination has either been thorough, thoughtful, or disconnected from moneyed (or copyrighted, if you will), interests.

In the end though, I hold out hope that our laws can and will accomodate our practices. It makes no sense to make an outlaw of most citizens if (and this is a substantial and debatable 'if') there is negligible harm in their current practices.

It should be obvious that I feel the submittor's question presents a false choice.

cleetus

Doesn't matter if it violates.....

The question is whether or not Google is violating copyright by indexing books without author permission. The answer is that any author that doesn't want their book indexed is an idiot or is afraid of people finding out that their book isn't any good before someone buys it.

If I were Google, I'd let natural selection do its thing. If someone doesn't want their book indexed, then don't index it. Then they'll get fewer sales than the smart people who did want their books indexed. Google plays it safe and lets stupid people screw themselves. It's all good.

It's like a "backup" copy to me...

Google books will never replace real books for me, but the service is very, very useful.

Case in point: I was writing a research paper this week, and needed to search through a book for a specific name. As this book didn't have an index, I wasn't too enthused about looking through it page-by-page for one bit of information, so I fired up Google books and, bingo - got the name, page number, and some more information as well.

More importantly, however, was a second case. As I was about to turn in the paper, I realized I hadn't completed a reference and needed to find a page number in a book I didn't have with me. I first thought I was screwed, but then fired up Google books and, once again, bingo - I got precisely what I needed even though my book was 25 miles away at the time.

Google adds value to books. I'll still buy just as many books as before - probably more, as now it's easier for me to find books I'm interested in - and makes the books I own much more "user friendly". Great service.

just a reminder...

Perfectly informed consumers are a necessary condition of a perfectly competitive market. The large x don't want the current market to become more competitive because that favors small x.

I don't think they're violating copyright

Copyright violation would be that they show the whole book and/or export it as an e-book for you (with or without profit) no matter whether you can buy the book elsewhere or not.

I think most copyright laws have a clause in it that you can use excerpts from a book but not a whole book as long as you note the source of your information with the excerpt. This means that I can use a page out of a book and use it in my essay without having to pay copyrights for the whole book (would become even more expensive for students and other academia) or even copy it from the library aka from a book I don't own myself.

The same happens here. Google gives you the possibility to search for a phrase, displays which book it comes from and a small portion of the book where the phrase is displayed. It's not like they are giving the whole book to you as soon as you find the phrase. They don't steal the book, they get it out of the library, scan it in, OCR it and then if they find a phrase in that book you search for, they display you the particular page, but not the whole book. Just like I can go to the library, scan/copy the whole book (if I have money enough for paper/copies) and then use a single page in my essay.

Strapping on my aluminum foil deflector beanie

I think Google will get away with this obvious infringement on copyright for a reason entirely unrelated to issues of ownership or profit. And that is that the government wants it. Specifically, the government wants to be able to quickly datamine works to determine explicitly, and by correlation, what exactly certain people are reading and writing and why.

Google may even get funding from the government to do this, or to give special fulltext database access to investigators.

The Supreme Court will back them up because the use will be declared to be necessary to the needs of law enforcement and national security.

Great Defense Google!

So, If someone was suing my company, I too would probably come up with some "statistics" that showed I was actually helping them. Not that I don't believe in google's "do no evil", but no company really thinks THEY are doing evil, not even Philip Morris, they just provide what the customer wants.