In 2004, Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, Rick Pellinger & Larry Lessig brought a suit to the US government to try to get orphaned works – out of print & with no clear copyright owner – into the public domain.
Google’s done an end-run around that process, with their settlement with the Author’s Guild, and instead of these cultural works going into the public domain, they’ve instead gone into Google. Says Kahle:
As that legislation has been wending its way through the Capitol Hill meat grinder, it turns out that Google, the AAP, and the Authors Guild were negotiating their own private solution to the problem of orphan works. After digesting the proposed Google Book Settlement, it becomes clear that the dizzyingly complex agreement is, in essence, an elaborate scheme for the exploitation of orphan works. The class action mechanism allows the Authors Guild (8,500 members) and the AAP (260 members) to extrapolate themselves to include millions of unfindable and unknowable rightsholders to orphan works. It is to this end–the certification of a class that includes the orphans–that the parties need the blessing of the court.
The upshot, if the Settlement is approved, would be legal protection for Google, and only for Google, to scan and provide digital access to the orphan works. Presto! Like magic, Google proceeds without any need for legislation: their own private orphan works legislation.
So, should the Settlement be approved, Google will be handed exclusive access to the orphans, and the public loses out. [more...]
