Caulfield Redux

Though it's old news by now, we may as well note that Fredrik Colting lost the first round in his battle to publish 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye in the United States (the book is available in the U.K.) However, there is still the appeal, which may overturn the court's decision. And in the WSJ, Julie Steinberg wonders about some of the same issues we discussed here:

That Tom Stoppard was able to borrow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from "Hamlet" without penalty speaks more to Shakespeare's inability to protest than to the cultural acceptance of character appropriation.

Inspiration

I confess I'd never heard of Swedish writer Fredrik Colting before I read this editorial in the New York Times.

The piece strikes me as rather odd. It seems to be arguing that there are certain characters who should be left alone. That is to say that writers might be able to write "fan fiction" or sequels/prequels based on some fictional characters but not others. Why is that?

I guess I don't get why writers shouldn't have the freedom to write about whatever -- and whomever -- they want. I understand issues of copyright, but I nevertheless don't see why writers shouldn't be able to find inspiration wherever it strikes, even in a copyrighted text.

I'd love to hear what others think about Colting, his work, and this issue.

Google Book Settlement Website

It may be of interest to point out that the Google Book Settlement website has detailed information about the settlement agreement, and also online and downloadable claim forms. N.B. the UK's ALCS (Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society) has published a warning about third-party phishing operations that may target users of the site.

From the FAQ:

I am not a United States citizen, or I live outside of the United States. Am I included in this Settlement?

Yes, most likely you are. If you are a citizen of another country or live in another country, you are likely to own a U.S. copyright interest if:

Your Book was published in the United States;
Your Book was not published in the United States, but your country has copyright relations with the United States because it is a member of the Berne Convention; or
Your country had copyright relations with the United States at the time of the Book’s publication.

You should assume that you own a U.S. copyright interest in your Book, unless you are certain that your Book was published in, and that you reside and are located in, one of the few countries that have not had or do not now have copyright relations with the United States. The Copyright Office has published a list of countries with which the United States has copyright relations, available at www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf. If you have further questions about whether you own a U.S. copyright interest in your Book or Insert, you can contact Class Counsel, who are the attorneys representing the Settlement Class. Their names and contact information are on the Notice. You may also seek advice from an attorney or a rights organization in your country.

P.S. The Irish Times has quite an interesting article on the whole issue here.

Google Book Settlement - the saga continues

According to Dagens Nyheter journalist Juan Flores, who seems to be the man on the case for that particular Swedish daily, Bonnier has become the first large publishing house in Sweden to dispute the Google arrangement. Bonnier's company lawyer, Dag Wetterberg, will be quite busy right now, as Google has evidently scanned some 60,000 titles by Bonnier authors, and in 6,000 of these cases the whole book has been scanned. Bonnier is being offered a lump sum of a million Swedish kronor (i.e. about €100,000, slightly less in sterling) for this monumental control of titles, which Bonnier thinks is far too little money for far too much long-term power.

It would seem to outsiders like me that this is becoming a rather hubristic exercise on the part of Google. It also looks as if Google has been scanning thousands, maybe millions of books, if we extrapolate from the Bonnier case, on the sneak, hoping that they will be able to do something with these scans that will afford Google a profit. According to the Bonnier lawyer, Google seem to have been scanning away at U.S. universities that have Swedish departments (well, no problem in the UK, there aren't many...), and this could mean that every Swedish book bought by these universities before the beginning of 2009 can end up on a Google data base.

The Bonnier lawyer does not appear to be a Luddite, merely wondering who is going to profit from all this. Obviously, it is a great boon for books to be scanned, should the originals be destroyed by accident or war. But I hope that European publishing houses will wake up to what is going on, before they find out that, by doing nothing, they have signed up to wholesale control of their publications by Google.

The other large Swedish publishing house, Norstedts, has not yet come to a decision as to how to tackle this issue.

I do get the feeling that this whole issue has been handled badly by the various players, leading to a situation where publishing houses worldwide are suddenly finding themselves in an opt-out position, never an enviable one to be in.

Orphans and Foundlings

News from Washington, D.C. that the U.S. Justice Department is looking into the Google books settlement with a view to determining details of Google's newly acquired right to digitize entire libraries. One important emerging problem is the potential antitrust issues that may arise from the company's ability to commercialize content on an exclusive basis. Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive -- another organization that is building a large online digital book collection -- has expressed the hope that U.S. District Judge Denny Chin will reject the settlement as it presently stands on the grounds that Google's ability to digitize the so-called "orphan books" (books or materials for which the copyright owner can't be found, but which are none the less covered by U.S. copyright law) gives it a free pass for infringement.

See also in this blog: Going Google
The Digibooks Row

Going Google

The Bookseller's managing editor Philip Jones writes in his blog that the UK Publishers Association held seminars this week to explain to members why the Google Settlement matters to them:

As is becoming increasingly clear there is no easy option available to non-US publishers. (I'm not sure there is an easy route for US publishers either, but at least they got to have a say in the drawing up of the Settlement.)

Perhaps most bizarre is that all publishers must actively opt out, otherwise they will find themselves bound by the agreement. As publishers are finding out, there is almost no good reason to opt out, since Google could then carry on its digitisation process, and opting out would put the onus back on the individual publisher to pursue its own legal challenge—hardly advisable. Even objecting to the settlement at the Fairness Hearing, set for New York on 11th June, means you are bound by the agreement.

Those publishers who do decide to opt out will have to do so by May 5. At the seminars it was announced that Google could start advertising a digitized book offer consumer service in the United States via the Google search engine as early as July.

See also: The Digibooks Row

The Digibooks Row

In a new move on a topic that may be of direct interest to readers of this blog, especially translators whose titles frequently go out of print, Google is currently preparing to finalize and fully implement its book digitization program. Having reached a $125m agreement with the US Authors' Guild and the Association of American Publishers aimed at finally settling the class action suit that raised serious charges of copyright infringement in relation to Google's Book Search, the company is now waiting for the court decision which will allow it to go ahead. As The Register notes, not everyone in the world of Web 3.0 (aka the "Data Web") is happy with the likelihood of Google acquiring what they see as a virtual monopoly on international library digitizing:

Having settled with the authors and publishers, it can exploit its financial power from within a protective legal barrier, for the class action suit covers the entire class of authors and publishers," [Harvard University libraries head Robert] Darnton wrote. "No new entrepreneurs will be able to digitize books within that fenced-off territory, even if they could afford it, because they would have to fight the copyright battles all over again. If the settlement is upheld by the court, only Google will be protected from copyright liability."

Since trumpeting Darnton's words hither and yon, the press had been all but quiet on the matter. But then, early last week, Wired tossed up a blog post entitled "Who's Messing With the Google Book Settlement? Hint: They're in Redmond, Washington." The New York Law School recently asked the court for permission to voice its concerns on the matter, and Wired took enormous pleasure in pointing out that the law school's Google Book Settlement project is funded solely by Microsoft.