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| Home > Thomas Lipscomb |
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| Thomas Lipscomb |
10/26/05
I do object to having my published/copyrighted works made available to the public via the Google Print Library Project.
This is just a variation on the case lost by The New York Times in which the Times argued it had the rights to electronically republish anything it had previously published, even though it had no specific contractual rights for electronic publication.
Google has decided to ignore that clear precedent and pursue one half of digerati Stewart Brand's 1987 statement that "information wants to be free." Google should have paid attention to the rest of what Brand said:
"Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property,’ the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better."
There are plenty of absurdities in copyright law, including the ridiculous recent extension of copyright on a certain celluloid Disney mouse. But there is no argument over the basic principle of a protected period for authors and innovators being in the public interest. Proof of the principle is readily available in the soaring economies common to nations whose citizens have materially and intellectually benefited from its application where it was set in law.
Google seems to be doing just fine financially, and protects its intellectual property vigorously, as is its right. It seems patently ridiculous to take that stance and then announce its intention to simply steal what it wants from writers and copyright holders.
PEN should join the Guild's and AAP's suit as amicus curiae.
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