RE: Re: Authors Guild's Paul Aiken Opposes 'Turning Copyright Law Upside Down' -- Except When the Guild Is Helping Publishers Impose a 'License By Default'

> The technology is there. The public's
> expectations are there. It's time for legal and business
> model interests to wake up and catch up.

I would say, rather, it's time for technology and the public to realize that they have to act within the constraints of the law, even if they have the ability to do otherwise. Just because you have the ability to hack into the Bank of America's computer doesn't mean you should do it.

> As you said, google is driving sales. It is pretty
> hard for an author who has allowed their work to be
> published to complain about an activity that drives
> sales of that published work.

The books that are troublesome are not books that are being peddled currently by their publishers. Of course, the authors of these books are likely to want the books to be Googled. It is books that have no publisher--probably because they are out of print--that are the problem, in my view. And these books are likely to be the majority of any library's holdings.

The rights holders of these books may have their own plans for marketing the books, such as agreements with other online outlets. They may not want them visible at all, such as the heirs of an avowed racist whose published books the heirs now view as embarassing. The author of a book with lots of four-letter words may not want the book indexed because the index produces a complete list of every word, giving book-burning fundamentalists an easy target for yet another burning.

The point is, the rights holders and their licensees have the *exclusive* right to determine a book's copying. Observance of that fact has to be fundamental to any plan to copy books, but authors don't see that in Google's plans.

• Mike Bradley www.techpubs.com ,