Slashback: OpenOffice, SuitSat, Google Books 177
Sutor says "no way" to VNUnet OpenOffice story. Andy Updegrove writes "Earlier today a story by Tom Sanders at Vnunet.com covered by Slashdot didn't make sense to me, as it ran counter to the joint determination of Sun and IBM to make ODF succeed. In part, the story relied on an email exchange with Bob Sutor, IBM's Vice President of Standards and Open Source, so I asked Bob whether the story got it wrong. The answer? Sutor said: 'To be more clear, and on the record, IBM and Sun are working together happily and effectively on the OpenDocument Format. I think we've made a terrific amount of progress in the last year and that's because of the broad cooperation by the community. I'm not sure why we were dragged into the referenced story, but it was certainly nothing we initiated.'"
Google forgives BMW after delisting. dbucowboy writes "According to Matt Cutts, Google has re-included BMW.de in the Google index due to their willingness to cease supposed blackhat SEO practices." From the article: "I appreciate BMW's quick response on removing JavaScript-redirecting pages from BMW properties. The webspam team at Google has been in contact with BMW, and Google has reincluded bmw.de in our index. Likewise, ricoh.de has also removed similar doorway pages and has been reincluded in Google's index."
SunComm vows to make right their DRM debacle. Rinisari writes "SunnComm, creators of the highly controversial MediaMax DRM implementation on a number of Sony BMG and indie CDs have issued a statement through the EFF that they are committed to notifying consumers and issuing updates/patches to fix security holes caused by the software. MediaMax is one of the two copy protection schemes about which Sony is being sued class-action style."
SuitSat-1 weak but not dead. zark22 writes "Suitsat, the amateur radio transmitter stuffed inside a surplus Russian spacesuit and chucked out the International Space station is alive and well, if somewhat weak and staticky. Users can still follow its progress at the Suitsat webpage."
UMich President defends Google book search. eaj writes "University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman defended the legality and ethics [PDF] of the Google Book Search project to a meeting of the Association of American Publishers on Monday. The AAP is suing Google over the book scanning involved in the project. From the article: '[We] believe this is a legal, ethical, and noble endeavor that will transform our society. Legal because we believe copyright law allows us the fair use of millions of books that are being digitized. Ethical because the preservation and protection of knowledge is critically important to the betterment of humankind. And noble because this enterprise is right for the time, right for the future, right for the world of publishing, right for all of us.' CNet news also has a video."
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:5, Insightful)
But when the effort of doing so exceeds the reasonable effort of walking into the library and scanning the entirety of said literary work, I would contend that Google has met it's burden (though I am sympathetic of the rights-holders desires). If you make the argument that it's a rare and unique book, then I think that the rights-holders arguments fall apart. I think in that case, those are the books most deserving of digital preservation.
A case could be made that someone could garner this same information from the Library of Congress by sitting there for hours on end. One thing that Google print brings is the possibility that a book will gain more exposure, and therefore potentially more revenue for it's owner.
wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
nom it is not a 'fundamental' right. It is a privilage granted by congress, which is a representation of the people.
Read the constitution.
Nice strawman you threw in there. Illegal search and seazure is written into the constitution.
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of either is to get you to buy the book. The publishers should be praising Google for making their books searchable.
I personally have bought several books based on text I have searched for using Google Book search.
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:5, Insightful)
This is probably the reason why she (and many other people and institutions) believe that Google is in the right on this issue, and why the publishers are trying to use allegations issued in the press, rather than the courts to fight against it.
If the publishers had a reasonably strong case in court for this issue, they probably wouldn't be trying their "ham-handed appeals" in their press releases and in the popular press.
Unfortunately, Google is proposing to do something which would be of great benefit to all of mankind, and it might have a negative impact on some publisher's profits, and they are fighting claw, tooth, and nail to avoid that!
I'm both an author and a publisher, but I welcome this change -- I'd love to see my work reach wider audiences and I'm not too worried about losing a few percentage points of profits. In fact, it might be that if more people could easily find my work on Google, more of them would go out of their way to purchase it!
OpenOffice, OpenDocument, who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair use, my ass. The only reason Google wants this program to be opt-out is because that makes it better for Google. Google plans to use the fact that it has access to all this material as a way to market Google's products and services. If it only has a partial database, those products and services instantly become less valuable. But I ask again, why should a publishing company be made to market Google's products and services, for no benefit to the publishing company?
Ah -- you say there's a marketing benefit to the publisher. Fine. Then Google should do some market research to figure out what that benefit is, in dollar amount, and charge the publisher for it. Sounds like a great business opportunity for Google to me. But of course, that wouldn't work, because it would give companies the opportunity to opt out by not paying, and Google doesn't want that.
Suppose Google wanted to put my likeness up on its Web site. Should I have to write and ask them to take it down? Isn't it reasonable to assume that Google doesn't have the right to do that without my permission? So why is it any different for my words?
I repeat: Fair use, my ass. "Public commons," my ass! This isn't "public." This isn't "us." This is Google and Google alone. This isn't for the posterity of society. It's for Google's posterity, and longterm financial gain, at the expense of other businesses.
Promoting the good of society is the role of the government. If the world needs an electronic index of books, then let the federal government pass a law mandating it, provide budget for it, and let it be managed as a project of the Library of Congress. If, on the other hand, a commercial company like Google wants to spend its own money to do the same, then more power to them. But since it's not Congress, Google shouldn't be able to force anybody in this country to comply with its business goals -- in fact, you might think it would have the good grace to ask first, if it's really dedicated to "not being evil."
(And re: "not being evil" -- am I to presume Google is hiring philosophy PhDs as well as computer science ones?)
Only for BMW? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I guess if your site has been delisted, all you have to do is remove it, email Google, and watch it be re-listed. Right? More likely, if you are anyone other than a Fortune 500 company, you're email will never be answered. Or unless you pay some cash.
at least think about it first... (Score:3, Insightful)
[sarcasm] Yeah, and libraries have no right to purchase books and throw them on shelves for anyone to check out for free. Heaven forbid someone quote a book in a scholarly paper! Those writings are the work of the author, and shouldn't be stolen by those wanting to piggy-back off their labors! [/sarcasm]
It's called "fair use". So, the debate is (or at least should be) whether Google's project consitutes fair use or not. To state point-blank that they have no right to do it based on the idea of copyright is to ignore precedent, which says reasonable exceptions can (and should) be made. The right not to have your book quoted, for example, is something you don't have unless you specifically reserve it (can you even do that? I assume so...).
No matter how much they redact irrelavent text or try to keep users from gaining full access to the book, someone will.
I could argue that libraries make it easier for someone to get their hands on a book (for free) long enough to scan and possibly OCR it, then share it online via P2P. Just because something can be abused doesn't mean it should be forbidden. You have to weigh the costs and benefits.
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is not property. The books are the property of whoever owns the individual books. The right to copy those books are something entirely different.
No - privacy concerns and Governmental checks-and-balance have nothing to do with this issue; not even remotely. The interesting thing here is while Copyright is very useful, it also takes AWAY the public's rights. This is why people are so concerned about Copyright being truely limited. And this is also why there exists Fair Use within the very laws that establish Copyright. It might also be worth stressing that while much of our law is based on property, Copyright is not property - even with the use of snazy memes like "intelectual property".
Indeed. The easy access you're describing is called... a book. The access is already there in the form of book stores, public libraries, and personal libraries. If keeping something from being copied is your concern, don't publish.
But will Google forgive me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Put BMW in a Suit (Score:3, Insightful)
Impulse buying, while applicable to $10 Pokemon Clocks on eBay, is generally not something one does with $60,000 luxury cars. Even assuming averages to try and theorize how many people checking out "what's happening on the web" actually dropped sixty grand to congratulate themselves on finding bmw.de in the Google index, I'd guess this was a rather ineffectual marketing ploy.
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand why this action may not have much appeal. After all, public libraries and used bookstores hardly have Google-sized wallets. But then... Amazon and eBay sell used books too.
If google can do it, then we all can do it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I remembered Google's book search, which came up with at least five or six solid hits that actually helped - the books were in my local library, and their titles/subjects had absolutely nothing to do with what I was looking for, but the info was there. Without Google book search, I'd still be looking through stacks at the library. There's a time and a place for reading every available book tangentially related to a subject, but there are other times when an indexing service simply speeds up research.
I should point out that most of the pages I needed to read were blocked by Google; they only allow you to look at random pages out of certain books. But they index the entire book & tell you on exactly what pages you can find word references. A very, very useful tool, one that I will use in the years to come. I hate to sound like a shill for Google, but for what it's worth, this has been my experience with the service, and for this very specific and uncommon topic, it was very helpful.
Re:Too much power (Score:5, Insightful)
I say you might as well use the competing search engines if it is too bothersome, because the power that you think they have too much of was power given to them by users.
Re:I'm tired of these ham-handed appeals to morali (Score:3, Insightful)
Conceptually, Google makes two copies of the book in order to offer it for searching - an entire copy of the book stored on its servers, and snippets of that copy offered for public consumption.
I contend that neither copy meets requirements for fair use. In the first copy, Google is making an entire copy of the work. The copy deprives the publisher of a sale (Google didn't buy the book), copies the entire work, and intends to use that copy for commercial purposes (offering snippets from it on a public web site). There's no review or criticism at that stage, because the public doesn't see it...it's just being downloaded into a database.
The second copy (from the database to the end-user) doesn't feel like Fair Use either. I don't see any literary review or criticism attached to Google Book Search...just sentences from the book offered without question, on-demand, at the request of searchers. It's not a matter of offering the same snippet to everybody, as a typical fair-use case would; instead, they propose to offer separate snippets based on what the user asks for. Again, this service is inherently commercial - its goal is solely to get people to visit Google so they can benefit from the increased exposure and hopefully sell an ad or two.
This is probably the reason why she (and many other people and institutions) believe that Google is in the right on this issue, and why the publishers are trying to use allegations issued in the press, rather than the courts to fight against it.
If the publishers had a reasonably strong case in court for this issue, they probably wouldn't be trying their "ham-handed appeals" in their press releases and in the popular press.
The publishers are using the court to fight this, and Google is also fighting this in the popular press - or did you miss Google's own press page [google.com] and Eric Schmidt's [blogspot.com] "'ham-handed appeal'" in the Wall Street Journal?
Unfortunately, Google is proposing to do something which would be of great benefit to all of mankind, and it might have a negative impact on some publisher's profits, and they are fighting claw, tooth, and nail to avoid that!
I'm both an author and a publisher, but I welcome this change -- I'd love to see my work reach wider audiences and I'm not too worried about losing a few percentage points of profits. In fact, it might be that if more people could easily find my work on Google, more of them would go out of their way to purchase it!
I actually agree with you. I think the publishers that are fighting this are short-sighted, just like I think the recording industry should find a way to co-exist with peer-to-peer networks. I don't think anybody is denying that the program itself would be a benefit for publishers and authors.
What I am personally worried about is requiring publishers to opt-out, not opt-in, to Book Search. I think the legal situation is clear, and Google needs to do the "non-evil" thing and ask for permission before including these books. You'd give permission, right? If I was in the publishing business, I would too, and I can't believe we're the only two people with an ounce of common sense.
Amazon.com has been running Search Inside the Book far longer than Google, and nobody complains because they're doing the right thing and asking the publishers to participate, not forcing them to opt-out. Google's opt-out program is especially egregious, because not only do they want publishers to opt-out, they want them to opt-out every title, and won't accept a blanket opt-out from the company.
That's wrong, and I think Google should be ashamed of themselves. The way to get people to like you is not to force yourself on them. It's not the way the Old Google did things.
Re:If google can do it, then we all can do it! (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see it is: If Google allows you to search in books and provides snippets of the work, that is fair use.
What I do not think falls within the perview of fair use, is the wholesale scanning of libraries.
I realize you can't have the one without first engaging in the other... but the Copyright owner may NOT want to give Google permission to do this.
Google's book scanning shouldn't be an Opt-Out kind of deal. Copyright laws specifically make it an Opt-In issue. Like anyone else, Google can use a portion of the material for fair use.
Google is violating the publishers'/authors' copyright by doing what they're doing. From a legal standpoint, what they intend to do shouldn't be relevant. They are copying the whole book, and AFAIK, fair use doesn't allow for that. I fail to see why they should get any special exemption(s).
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Put BMW in a Suit (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it's so one-sided. Anyone in Germany who wants to buy a BMW is going to find BMW's web site with the second URL they enter, even if Google was the first. OTOH, if Google was the first, and trying to search for a major name brand resulted in a whole load of spin-off pages and not showing the home page for the brand in question, then Google's index loses credibility.
Personally, I think Google has been losing pretty badly on this front recently. I've been searching for some particular audio-visual equipment, and putting the name of the brand or the part number of the equipment into Google yields several pages of all-the-same, all-as-useless-as-each-other price comparison web sites, and the occasional blog pretending to be a review, but rarely if ever the page for the equipment in question on the brand's own web site. If a search engine can't take me right there, I might as well guess the brand's home page and navigate through their own site to find what I'm looking for. Consequently, I have effectively given up using Google for these searches now. Not giving the people what they want really does have repercussions...
Re:But will Google forgive me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If google can do it, then we all can do it! (Score:3, Insightful)
You may have individual, constitutional right to protect your work from unauthorized copying, but the public also has a public constitutional right to use your work whether you like it or not- to promote the progress of science and useful arts. Your copyright is there to ultimately benefit the public.
Re:Too much power (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope.
I mean, who needs domain names anymore?
People who don't want Google to get too much power. Or Yahoo! Or MSN, or any of the other search engines...
I just type what I'm looking for into Google ...
I knew someone once who insisted on travelling everywhere by bus, and always used the same company. He thought the bus company were evil because they didn't fly to Chicago or do Caribbean cruises. We all thought he was an idiot.
You want to explain to me why your laziness and your inflexibility should be Google's problem?
I think it's just a little evil to essentially make an entire company disappear from teh interwebs
Just typical, I spend my last mod point, and then I find a troll like this. Please reassure me that you are not really this stupid.
If they weren't so pervasive then this would be a non-issue
It is a non-issue. You can aways choose to use a different search engine.
when I see these stories I get a little worried
Let me guess - Osama bin Laden is standing behind you and he's going to shoot you in the head if you use Yahoo, right? You can aways choose to use a different search engine.
Hopefully they won't expand their definition of "cheating" to include things we might think are OK.
Well, if they do, you can aways choose to use a different search engine. Come on, fire up a couple of those brain cells. This really isn't that difficult.