back to article Google Books loses lions of literature

Documents released as a result of last week's hearing into Google's book-scanning settlement reveal thousands of authors asked to be excluded from the project. There are over 6,000 authors, including literary colossus Jeffrey Archer, on the list prepared by Rust Consulting for Google. Rust set up a call centre to receive opt- …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow!

    So Mr Wells' time machine really did work then?

  2. Ralph B
    Dead Vulture

    H.G.Wells more worrying than J.Archer

    Old H.G. must have used his time machine to submit his paperwork. Guess he's seen how it all turns out very badly.

  3. John Lilburne

    Eh

    Kipling is out of copyright as of 2006.

  4. Thomas 18
    Happy

    Opt out?!

    How exactly can this be an opt-out system?! how about we make personal music downloading opt-out. You can download stuff until you get a personal letter from the publisher.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    H G Well opted out? Or was that Mandy?

    Did Mr Wells come from the past and file it?? Or was that Mandleson making a false copyright claim?

    Mandy's latest changes to the Digital Economy Bill are flawed:

    "Similarly appeals must focus on whether the rights holder actually holds the rights mentioned in the infringement notice"

    Only Appeals? So the claim isn't determined until you challenge it? Which costs money. So any false claimant can impose a fine on you by simply making the false claim? You then have to pay the appeal costs to simply even challenge a claim that was false?

    The fine can't work. Copyright is automatically assigned to the author, so it is often impossible to show that someone claiming copyright doesn't actually have it because there is no paper trail. So a fine for falsely claiming copyright fails at the first hurdle. You would need to prove that 3rd party person doesn't have copyright, rather 4th party person has it, when 4th party person doesn't have any reason to help prove your claim.

    "It emphatically points out the copyright holder must show an infringement occurred, and that the subscriber's IP address was infringing at the time it occurred"

    They don't even have to prove they own the copyright, so this is meaningless.

    Really Mandy is doing rush changes to his bill and it's all over the shot, and he's trying to get it through Parliament without discussion of the detail. It needs to fail, because he's going to make you Labour MPs totally unelectable.

    There's also fair use, which remains uncodified. You would be violating by cross coding a free promotional video onto an iPod for viewing. Parliament needs to discuss the full consequences of this before they put themselves out of office forever.

    Look at it this way, if they pass this bill, then we are going to discuss the full consequences of it, all the way through the election and they will have to defend Mandleson.

  6. Whitter

    they seek it here...

    Went to the site, but I for one couldn't find the list referred to.

    There's a lot of stuff there, but not terribly well structured for a non-expert like myself.

  7. Marvin the Martian
    IT Angle

    Archer the giant lion?

    I once had the misfortune to be stuck in a house with only a short stories collection by the Archer fellow. It's title was wrong, it should have been "plots of movies I've seen," as each of them was a half-assed retelling of a story that was familiar. [Well, I can only vouch for the first few, sometimes boredom is preferable over annoyance.]

  8. Ned Leprosy Silver badge

    Damn

    No Archer, no business case. End of story. He's the author that all the literary greats such as Shakespeare, Plato and Hubbard looked up to. Look, if you can say "thousands of authors asked to be excluded from the project ... Wells, Kipling" etc then I don't see why I can't do the same!

    Sigh, I remember when Archer was just the Conservatives' resident buffoon, before he became the man whose glare could turn even Mandy into stone.

  9. Bilgepipe
    Headmaster

    Lions of Literature?

    Shouldn't that read "liars" of literature, where convicted criminal Archer is concerned...?

  10. hahnchen
    Thumb Down

    Rudyard Kipling?

    I guess the public domain is dead now.

  11. DMA

    Umm... Not quite...

    According to an article in the trade blog MediaBistro, these publishers/authors have opted out of the class-action settlement, not out of Google's activity. This means they may sue Google separately for infringement.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    can you pre-register?

    I've never written a novel, but i may at some point in the future. Can i opt out of any future works i produce being grabbed by google? Possibly overwhelming them with claims from potential authors in the process.

    1. Charlie

      You want to overwhelm google with data?

      Erm, good luck there.

  13. Dr Paul Taylor

    index?

    The "search" box on this site seems to search their discussion forum, not their index.

    Can anyone work out how I might use this site to check on the registration of my objection to including my academic textbook?

  14. Hollerith 1

    I opted out

    I am the author of one modest published novel and many short stories in anthologies, as well as poetry. I opted out because i am so 'under the radar' and also in the UK that Google would have swept me up int heir 'orphan works' clause, and I would ahve been excluded from the digital version of my own works.

    While this would be gutting for me, my major concern is the huge public and university libraries int he USA, who joined in thinking they were helping to create the biggest public library in the universe. Sadly, they were lambs to the slaughter: Google prohibits them from having a full reading copy of any digital work, even of those books they have given from their collection for Google to digitise.

    Meanwhile, the two 'author associations int he USA have agreed to a dribble of dosh from the Google book coffers in return for rolling over and playing dead. They also rather assumed they represented authors around the globe. I hope the EU keeps fighting on. Funny that we European uathors now cling to the fighting spirit of the Germans for ultimate victory!

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