MEMBERSHIP FORUM RESPONSES:
Click on names to read the full responses.
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As of November 30, 2005, 57% of PEN Members do object to the Google Print Library Project, as it exists today, and 43% have no objections to it. Following is a selection of those responses. |
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Edward J. Renehan Jr.
I believe it is key that we all err on the side of securing and maintaining intellectual property rights for those who create the intellectual property in the first place.
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Gregory McNamee
Google's opt-out plan requires me, as a content creator, to beg to have my work excluded from scanning, which is much the same as saying that my home is free to be burglarized...
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David Levering Lewis
I regard Google's policy as arrogantly exploitative.
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Jerrold Mundis
Google's position is arrogant, avaricious, and thievish. They should be vigorously condemned for and resisted in this.
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Joseph Amiel
We who create books and other written material depend on their copyrights to provide and protect our livelihoods.
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James O. Grunebaum
For works still under copyright, prior permission with some compensation is the only just way to respect authors' intellectual property.
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Robert Lima
Google would provide worldwide opportunities for those books to be read, their ideas promulgated, their authors to become better known.
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Alexander Chee
I'd wait until I lived in a society that took care of me justly for my contributions, and not start now, inside a capitalist machine that bleeds its citizens of income until they don't have money for things like music or books...
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Mary Saracino
In general, I think online access to portions of published/copyrighted work is good from a promotional standpoint...
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Hettie Jones
Nothing will stop the onward press of info-gluts to commandeer all the printed words in the world. But who will protect the writer?
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Charles Fuller
Google has billions of dollars—am I to believe they have no obligation to take some of their earnings and pay us?
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Jayne Lyn Stahl
To limit, and curtail, the parameters of the Internet, and technology, would be like trying to put braces on a comet.
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Jonathan Rosenbaum
Having my work for the Chicago Review posted on the Internet for free—as it was for many years, until around 2001—helped my career incalculably.
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Margaret Diehl
I wouldn't want the whole book available but small portions provide free advertising.
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Thomas Lipscomb
It seems patently ridiculous to take that stance and then announce its intention to simply steal what it wants from writers and copyright holders.
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James Raimes
I see nothing but good coming from this project. No writers and no publishers are going to lose money.
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Sandra Langer
I don't think we can stop this any more than the music industry could but each download should cost and fees should go to creators!
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Marsha Lee Sheiness
Google just has no business copying someone's work without permission.
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Eugene Mirabelli
Google will make large sums of money through advertising on the archive site, but the writers of the copyrighted works will not receive a penny.
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Jesse Kornbluth
How dreary that book publishers, like the record companies, have taken a position which has already been proven to be short-sighted—and very much against the interests of writers.
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Thomas Hoobler
Don't let anybody fool you: the writer's greatest enemy is not Google; it's the publisher!
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Scott Walker
Book distribution is for people who read books; the system is also more or less broken.
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Roxana Robinson
If a published work is available for free in electronic form, in a process that eliminates the need for the physical object and circumvents licensing fees, the more the author's investment is vitiated...
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Rika Lesser
Whatever technologies are developed and however they continue to develop, the laws we have in place take precedence.
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Barbara Tedlock
I think that my work will become better known and many folks will want to buy the books, if they like them.
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Lolette Kuby
Google would jeopardize the library system itself—the beginning of the end of the public library as we know it?
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Joanna Bankier
Intellectual property rights are a thing of the past; they were not formulated to meet the challenges of a global world of writers and readers.
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Robert Kelly
I write for you. Anything that makes you able to read me is a good thing...'whoever you are,' as great Whitman said.
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