Re: Google Book Search and fair use

[Adam Hodgkin <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

Christine -- I dont think you are disagreeing with me, so that 
shows that my expression was not quite right.

Expanding the scope of 'fair use' can be helpful to publishers as 
well as to the community at large. Unfortunately, many publishing 
spokespeople do not see this. They are worried that fair use is a 
legal loop-hole through which the coach and horses will be 
driven.

The problem is how to move away from a situation in which 
publishers blanket prohibit all \secondary' use of texts through 
digitisation. This ban will become increasingly impossible to 
defend, (and is way too blanket), without, on the other hand, 
falling into a situation where 'anything goes' and 
authors/publishers are being ripped off.

A part of the answer has to lie between the distinction between 
uses for education, study and research on the one hand, and 
re-uses for commercial gain on the other hand. This is already 
part of our concept of 'fair use'. Its also where the Google Book 
Search case gets convoluted.

This is also a partial answer to Sandy Thatcher's request for 
more clarity on my "acceptable database interpretations of 
texts." I dont have a clearly worked out Rubric which most 
academic publishers should use to protect and proliferate their 
texts in acceptable form; but I suspect that the best solution 
for them and for the authors they represent would be a rubric 
which encourages the generative (Zittrain's phrase) use of 
databased versions of texts, provided that the computational use 
of the text does not undermine the market for those texts in 
human readable form. And it is at that point that the 'opt out' 
rights can be exercised. The rubric should provide that the 
publisher/author can step in and say, "You have just gobbled up 
my text and regurgitated it in ways which add no value and merely 
'capture' and redistribute all its content for my audience. 
Please desist." Publishers who were too aggressive with their 
'take down' notices would find themselves less popular with their 
readers and their authors.

I am not sure that this would be the right approach, perhaps 
someone can suggest a more explicitly 'generative' rubric, but a 
more permissive and open approach will surely be in the interests 
of publishers and creators.

Adam Hodgkin


On 16 Jul 2008, at 01:43, Pikas, Christina K. wrote:

> I can't disagree with this statement more:  "That means 
> creating a copyright environment in which consumer, college 
> students and researchers don't even think about 'rolling their 
> own'."
>
> To adequately meet the needs of our users, we need to combine, 
> remix, and mash-up the motley pile of interfaces and 
> information resources. What we need for publishers, content 
> owners, and content distributors to do is: - to work on ways to 
> show provenance when information is extracted and presented in 
> a new package - use standards - provide hooks, apis, and 
> machine readable interfaces - be more flexible in licensing so 
> that the content can be fully exploited (while still being 
> appropriately paid for)
>
> (maybe I'm not disagreeing with Adam upon re-reading his 
> e-mail)
>
> Our users *have* to roll their own because we are obviously not 
> doing enough for them.  When you have scientists spending time 
> trying to hack your resource instead of doing new science or 
> librarians programming AROUND errors in your system instead of 
> doing new and interesting things... Then it's your problem and 
> it's ours.
>
> (my personal opinion and not that of my place of work)
>
> Christina K. Pikas, MLS
> R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center
> The Johns  Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Adam Hodgkin
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 10:01 PM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Google Book Search and fair use
>
> Tackling pirates once they have emerged is one thing. Creating a
> climate in which pirates are a marginal issue is a better
> solution.
>
> That means creating a copyright environment in which consumer,
> college students and researchers dont even think about 'rolling
> their own'.
>
> I would have some suggestions:
>
> (1) Do not follow the path of the music publishers, who buried
> their heads in the sand and opposed or ignored every new use,
> every new technical development.
>
> (2) Devise a much better rubric, and devise an equivalent of
> robots.txt which allows and encourages acceptable database
> interpretations of texts.
>
> (3) Reguire database implementations to use and register their
> use of publisher supplied PDFs. Google should not be creating
> their own inferior PDFs of books published in the last 12 years
> because publishers should have been archiving these PDFs
>
> (4) Encourage and define a broader understanding of 'fair use'
> (ie 'embrace and extend the valuable concept of fair use rather
> than fight it all the way')
>
> That is enough by way of suggestions to keep several working
> parties busy for years, but the key change is one of 'attitude'
> in which publishers must recognise that creating, supplying and
> licensing the use of digital texts is the core part of their
> mission in 21st C. Not something to be pushed away and ignored
> for as long as possible.
>
> Adam