> The issue seems to be whether it is okay for Google to make digital
> copy of book solely for the purpose of creating index. I think that
> it is okay but it is not surprised that some authors don't like that.
An index is a derivative work (see Circular 14 from the Copyright Office, for instance). As such it requires permission of the rights holder of the original work.
> A royalty system wouldn't
> work perfectly and its precise contours would be open to
> debate, but you can't tell me that proposed comprehensive
> solutions wouldn't ameliorate litigation and put more
> resources into productive economic activity.
No disagreement here, Irv. In Google's case, the licensing agency would probably want to include the works in the indexing, don't you think?
> Second, I personally place very little, if any, value on
> the rights of heirs to censor material they might find
> embarrassing. To the extent that copyright advocates take a
> hard line on restricting access rather than saying access
> should be opened up fairly and equitably, I believe they're
> mistaken.
> They can't use copyright as a tool for censorship.
My point was that the heirs of a racist author might want to withhold permission to have the works indexed and published through the Google scheme. It is entirely within their rights to do that. They would not be censoring the book. They would only be opting out of Google's scheme. The hardcopies would remain in the libraries’ collections.
My other example (the author of a book with lots of 4-letter words) would want to opt out in order to avoid censorship.
> Copyright does not give the authors and their heirs any right
> to prevent people from making the public aware of their works.
It does if the method by which they are making people aware is infringing the work.
> > 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.
>
> But, the authors don't have the absolute exclusive right on copying.
> The U.S. copyright law contains exceptions to the exclusive right.
Yes, well, that's what we're debating--whether Google's plans for unsubmitted copyrighted works meet the requirements of the fair use exception.
In this regard, the San Francisco Chronicle this morning reported that Yahoo is establishing an opt-in program whereby rights holders must choose to have their works included. This avoids the controversy over possible infringements in the Google scheme:
"Yahoo-Backed Alliance to Open Web Library," http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
> > The point is, the rights holders and their licensees have the
> > *exclusive* right to determine a book's copying.
>
> *If* those rightsholders or licensees exist. And *if* they know
> they are rightsholders.
Yes, these are the works we're debating, that is, ones whose publishers don't submit and whose rights holders want to enforce their ownership rights by opting out. You've raised the issue of orphan works, but let's leave them aside for now, okay?
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