Journal einhverfr's Journal: Thoughts on Google Books Settlement 2
As a self-published author (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/) I am very pleased with the structure of the book settlement. The structure of financial compensation needs to be looked into, but the real significance is how it relates to orphaned works (in-copyright, out-of-print). Many authors including myself have been hoping that orphaned works will be treated differently, and generally when publishers retire a book the author has little recourse and no way of bringing the book back to market, unless such terms are negotiated into the authoring contract. In some cases, authors might be able to buy back the rights to the book that is out of print (often for a fairly hefty sum of money), but this is not always possible.
The most expensive books in my library have copies on the market for between $1000 and $2000 dollars. These are inevitably out of print scholarly works published on a limited run because the audience was low. After they go out of print, the prices sky rocket and they become very difficult to track down. Books on folklore studies are some of the worst in this area.....
In the past I have argued that copyright law ought to be amended to revert rights on copyright books to the original authors who might be able to bring the books to market through other means. This agreement addresses these concerns in another way, by establishing a precedent that out of print books are pose fundamentally different copyright concerns than books currently in print. This sets possible groundwork (though not present in this case) for compulsatory licensing in republishing out of print books, and this would be a good way to address the problem of orphaned works.
Copyright is fundamentally a contract between society and artists, where society grants the artist a temporary monopoly on a work in exchange for being able to use the work later in an unrestricted way. This helps keep artists (including authors) fed, encourages them to create more works, and enriches society by eventually bringing these works into the public domain. When a book is taken out of print, society is cheated in this deal, and this becomes a bigger issue as copyright terms have become substantially longer.
Once copyright is given (and in the US, because one cannot sue for more than fiancial losses prior to registration, I would say this is after copyright is registered), I think we need to consider this contract complete. An author or publisher which removes a book from the market prior to the expiration of the term of copyright is cheating the public in this deal, and there are good reasons to argue that this monopoly should be weakened when this occurs. The idea of compulsatory licensing in this case makes sense because the author still gets paid as per the contract with society, but no longer has the right to remove the work from the market. Both sides get their dues.
The Google settlement does not get us all the way there, but the section relating to out of print books is a very significant step in the right direction.
well said (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of the big problems is that if you are an author and your publisher ceases to print your book, often times they won't even sell you the rights back at a reasonable price, and sometimes they won't even sell them back at all. This makes it very hard for authors when this happens because in essence, the author no longer owns the work or rights to it. This is a bad deal for authors and also for the public.
So it isn't just the authors. The biggest offenders are the publishing houses.