Google and publishers finally agree: it's a brave new digital world

I’m sure you all remember Google’s digital book scanning project. The project, started earlier this century, aimed to scan every book in existence (just about) and make them available on line. Publishers and authors went to court over copyright infringement claims, and they had a strong case. Or at least they did when it looked like digital formats were a threat to the traditional closed ecosystem of writing, publishing, selling, buying and reading. That was then, etc.

Today, things seem a lot different. Now we’re further along in the digital transformation of print media, and just about everyone recognizes that digitization of, well, everything, is pretty much inevitable. Just like the music publishers before them and the movie industry right behind them, book and periodical publishers have figured out that eBooks are at the very least a whole new way to sell content. In fact, in a future that’s closer than we all imagine, they may become the only way.

This is why the publishers – one half of the suit against Google – came to a settlement this week, in a news item that barely made the news. At least it got much less coverage than the start of the lawsuits back in 2005. In an agreement whose terms were not fully disclosed, the publishers agreed to let Google scan away, presumably for cash payments and access to the digital content themselves. Google thus provides a scanning service on older, pre-digital books, so the publishers don’t have to do the work. Google in turn agreed to let publishers opt out of the program and exclude their books from being scanned.

Still hanging over the project however, is one potential show-stopper, and one in which there is more at stake. That is the author half; they have not settled, although the publishers action this week now leaves them without a powerful ally. The authors of older works – e.g. out of print but still under copyright ownership – face a dilemma. Google will potentially reveal parts of their work (20%) to the billions of Googlers on the planet, diluting the authors control and introducing yet another middleman who can take monetary or some other kind of cut from the profit. But the other edge of this sword is the benefit authors may receive from the exposure of older work that would otherwise die a neglected death. All those Googlers are potential new readers, after all. This part of the issue has a lot of implications.

The future demise of printed books is not inevitable, but survival is not guaranteed either. As president of the board of the West Chester Public Library, I am part of a team that works hard to ensure our institution stays relevant, even while eBook readers become as commonplace as library cards. Library staffers ‘get it’ when it comes to digital formats, and they’re ready to serve the public’s demand for the written word in every form that can be provided, including eBooks. (WCPL has eight color Nooks available for circulation, along with a large and growing collection of digital books and magazine content.) I believe the library has a part to play in helping readers transition from the paper and ink world to the electronic.

So it’s no secret or surprise that many things are in a transitional state; book publishing is one of many. The laws of copyright were originally designed for a different universe than the one we live in now. I support 100% the concept that the creator should be the first to exercise ownership rights, and be the first to benefit from a created work, including the digital version of that work. But there are many paths to how a work may get to that format, at least until the transition is over. This is just one more disruption to a paradigm we thought would never change.

 The NY Times covered the Google suit settlement here. 

Editor, ignorant of copyright law, cooks up a controversy

I can’t ignore the current controversy surrounding Cooks Source magazine (and web site) and copyright law on the web. There are two huge issues here, only one of which is getting the attention it deserves. The issues should be examined dispassionately; unfortunately ‘dispassion’ (if I can coin that word) appears to have left the building.

If you’ve missed the controversy du jour, the facts, briefly are these: Monica Gaudio, a blogger on the Gode Cookery web site, discovered that a post she wrote in 2005 (about the history of apple pie, no less, and it’s a fascinating story) had been lifted, word for word, by Cooks Source magazine and posted to their web site. Both print article and web posting credited Gaudio, but she had never been contacted, or her permission asked for. When she contacted Cooks Source, she was told by the editor there, Judith Griggs, (here comes the controversy) that anything posted online was in the public domain anyway and was not covered by copyright protection.

Since Griggs' reply has been posted all over the web, I have to repeat it here:

"But honestly Monica, the Web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!... If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than [it] was originally.... For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain… We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

So that’s the first part of the story. Griggs is wrong of course. Material on the web is not in the public domain; it is covered by copyright law like any other original material. Using it without permission is plagiarism, like it would be if it existed in any other medium. Cut and paste may be easy, but that doesn’t make it okay. In another post, Griggs claims to have been doing this for ‘three decades’ so I don’t know if that makes her ignorance harder to understand or perhaps easier. But anyway, you get the point.

But that’s only Act One of this drama. The second act began as Twitter and the blogosphere lit up with netizens in full fury. Gaudio posted the exchange above on her own blog and the story went viral: attacks on Griggs and her web site followed. At full fury, thousands of posts, tweets etc. flamed Cooks Source and Griggs personally. Things had, within a day, turned decidedly ugly. The mob was on the march.

Take a look at the Cooks Source FaceBook page and you’ll see what I mean. The nicest posts are mocking and critical; the worst are mean and nearly venomous. In addition to the flames, Griggs and Cooks Source have been satirized, with bogus versions of each now at large on FaceBook and Twitter in parody form. If you search for this controversy, it’s hard to know now what is original and what is satire.

When the flaming started, Griggs made a flippant attempt to apologize, but it only showed that she still didn’t get it and therefore only made matters worse. By now Griggs, posting on the Cooks Source FaceBook page, has been reduced to alternating between pleading to be left alone and threatening to report the ‘hackers’ to the FCC (!). Perhaps not surprisingly, her pleadings have only served to incite the mob further.

There are so many ways to look at this issue. I’m the last person to defend Griggs’ wrong-headed interpretation of the way IP ownership and plagiarism works on the web. She’s dead wrong in her actions and her thinking, and needs to be told so. But I’m also the last person to participate in an online lynching, which is what this has turned into.

Griggs and her team probably work on a shoestring, and get paid accordingly. Their foodie magazine is a freebie confined to ‘western New England’, with a circulation of less than 30,000, supported by advertising. (Incidentally, the mob has turned on the advertisers as well, in an attempt to put the whole enterprise out of business.) That Griggs is (or at least was) ignorant of copyright law is now well established. That she is careless, condescending and snooty, is also hard to deny. The voice of the crowd was right to correct her. But when is enough enough?

The current wisdom is that the web can police itself, and the crowd will drive out unacceptable behavior. But the tyranny of the majority and the rule of the mob presents an ugly dark side to the wide open, lightly regulated environment of the web. Persecution, mass-flaming and piling-on should not be condoned. I’ve posted about this subject before; cyber bullying has terrible consequences that poison the on-line world for all of us.

I’m not sure which part of this story disturbs me more: the flippant ignorance about copyright law, which (make no mistake) many besides Griggs share – or the aftermath, in which gleefully malicious mob behavior inflicts punishment far greater than what was justified by the original offense.

(Many tech and media sites are covering this story. If you want all the gory details, I recommend the coverage by MSNBC and CNET.)