Ursula Le Guin Leads Author Revolt Against Google Books, Launches Petition

The Guardian:

As the deadline of 28 January for writers to opt out of the Google book settlement approaches, Le Guin has launched a petition, signed by almost 300 authors, asking that the US "be exempted from the settlement", and that "the principle of copyright, which is directly threatened by the settlement, be honoured and upheld in the United States".

Read the whole story: The Guardian

Comments

[MrWebster]

03:23 AM on 01/24/2010

It seems to me that those against Google Books really have a problem with copyright laws. Google Books will only publish books whose copyrights have expired or are in the public domain. My impression is those who oppose it want to have rights which last forever.

[PDXPLT]

06:17 PM on 01/24/2010

I agree. See today's NY Times editorial on Sherlock Holmes.

[thrdr]

02:32 AM on 01/25/2010

Wrong. Google Books will claim the right to use works which are under copyright but whose authors "cannot be found" or who choose not to "opt out" of the deal--something no author should be required to do in the first place. Among other things. The whole thing is a perversion of copyright laws to the interests of Big Money--in this case Google. Noone--least of all Le Guin--is disputing the right of anyone to use books which are already public domain.

This is basically yet another nihilistic attack on the people who actually do the work by those who merely seek profit.

[Balzac]

03:00 AM on 01/24/2010

She's a good author.

[aspelling]

09:01 AM on 01/24/2010

I liked her books when I was a kid.
What's up with her? Doesn't she still have enough dough to live on?
Does she became so jealous to Rowling financial success (her and Potter books have very similar themes)?

[thrdr]

02:33 AM on 01/25/2010

What an asinine, childish remark.

Maybe if you'd ever actually MADE something and then had it stollen from you you might feel otherwise.

[Teadye]

01:29 AM on 01/24/2010

Just because a book is released in digital form doesn't mean the hard copies cease to exist. Ebooks are in addition to. It's a boon to those of us who need to reference an important book that has been pulled from print by the publisher. It's seldom the author that controls the availability of a book and when secondary market prices soar to astronomical heights, the authors don't see any income from the sales. Perhaps Ms Le Guin is powerful enough to control her publishers and the destiny of her work but the vast majority of authors are not. Most would prefer to have their works remain available to readers and to be able to collect royalties long after their publishers yank their books from the shelves, and to not have their work "disappeared" for 100 years after they die.

[the-lexicon]

03:39 PM on 01/28/2010

You cannot possibly generalize this. "Most would prefer..." false. there's no way to countenance this assumption.

[Palemoon]

07:43 PM on 01/23/2010

I like some ebooks now and then. Like some of the others, I prefer the real book, something that is tangible. However, I see the merits of ebooks and read some on occasion. Usually when I can't find something in book form, such as politically suppressed or banned books. ;o)

I'd have to side with the authors, allowing them control over their works always.

[thrdr]

07:20 PM on 01/23/2010

Google sucks.

[Matt Osborne]

09:13 PM on 01/22/2010

If only we all had the earning power of Margaret Mitchell, who is graced with eternal life as a family corporation, her descendants living like kings off the proceeds of her racist revisionism.

LeGuin is one of the great writers of the age, but there comes a point when even Pulitzer winners must become public domain. Seventy-five years after Ursula's death is long enough to wait before making it available as a free .PDF file.

[FogBelter]

01:33 PM on 01/22/2010

Here's my problem with digital books ... the content can be edited on the fly and the readers would never know. If you had a controversial book ... say "Catcher in the Rye" ... the distributor of the content could edit out offensive themes without alerting the reader. I believe Winston Smith in "1984" had a job similar to that.

If I own a hard copy or paperback book that has been on the shelf for 30 years I can be pretty confident the content of the book hasn't changed since it was first placed there.

[Aerows]

05:45 PM on 01/22/2010

Some formats are heavily encrypted so it's very difficult to extract them, edit them, and then re-encrypt them. I understand what you are saying, but with reprints, that risk has always existed. Obviously not to the same degree, but that risk has always been there. Look at the Bible as an example.

[FogBelter]

09:12 PM on 01/22/2010

I see your point, however my concern of edits to an original work isn't as focused on the user/hacker level, that would likely be thwarted by encryption. I'm thinking more in terms of manipulation at the corporate or governmental level. The thing with encryption is that someone holds the encryption key pairs ... the private/public keys. Now if encryption was performed by Google or Amazon, or whatever the data delivery origin point might be, at some point the Book would have to be unencrypted in order to be encrypted according to the proprietary delivery method of the source. Here is the point of failure in the encryption as safety model. Winston performed his edits at the bureaucratic level.

One possible method that could work is to have the original document or book digitized in a secured environment and a checksum generated from the totality of the content which could be stored in a database for later comparison with digitial representations of the original book that concerns of tampering are associated with. The checksum of the original document would be different from the hacked version.

All in all, call me a dinosaur, but I prefer an actual book.

[MrWebster]

03:17 AM on 01/24/2010

But then again, paper versions of a work will not stop the revisionism either. The American version of Clockwork Orange had the last chapter removed. Burgess could not do anything to stop the publisher. The original publishers are the main points of censorship and rewrite. Not the reprint houses which Google is acting as.

[the-lexicon]

03:36 PM on 01/28/2010

The fact that original publishers demand edits with or without the authors' permission or knowledge does not minimize the concern.

[loofa]

01:31 PM on 01/22/2010

go ursela go! good on ya