There have been a number of reactions by media and entertainment industries right across the board that showed how short-sighted they can be when it comes to the changes that new technology brings to the table. In my opinion though we can go right back to February of 2009 for what has to be the worst case.

Back then I wrote here about how the Authors Guild was getting all up in arms about how Amazon’s Kindle was going to have text-to-speech enabled by default. As I wrote then

What it boils down to is that this Guild; which is suppose to be acting on behalf of it’s member authors, says that by creating an audio version of a book you are in fact creating a whole new product that is totally based on a copyrighted book. In other reports on this the Guild has even gone to the point of suggesting that any verbal or audio reproduction of a book is and infringement on a copyright and there for illegal.

In the end Amazon capitulated and shipped the Kindle with text-to-speech disabled as well as providing publishers with the option to totally disable the feature. Of course this was a great feature that would have been a boon to visually impaired people and maybe even have encouraged more sales of the e-reader.

However the Guild had its way and Amazon scampered back to its corner licking its balls wounds. Instead of seeing this as a way to encourage additional sales, and not just to  the visually impaired the Guild decided that being able to double dip on sales was more preferable to providing added value that would benefit everyone.

Short-sighted and dumb.

The worst case of short-sightedness by anyone in 2009 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Currently Google, as a part of its mission to index all the information in the world, has through its Book Search program scanned the text of some seven million books. Along the way though, they have also attracted a class action lawsuit for copyright infringement. The lawsuit has been brought to court by the Authors Guild, which at the point of the lawsuit had 8,000 members, and several publishing companies. Google’s argument against the lawsuit is that its scanning, indexing and snippet-providing was a fair and non-infringing use because it provided for a wider distribution and public access to those books.

Many copyright professionals expected that the Authors Guild v. Google case would be one of the most important tests of fair use to date. However the proposed settlement is extremely troubling in that it will in effect give Google total and absolute control over all orphan works and in-copyright but out of print books. While the settlement still has to be approved by the judge hearing the case the end result if approved would see Google get among other things, a license to display up to 20% of the contents of in-copyright out-of-print books which they would be able to runs ads alongside the displays. As well they would be able to sell access to the full texts of these books to institutional subscribers and individual purchasers.

Additionally the settlement that Google has arrived at with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers would if approved be settled as a class action on behalf of all book authors and publishers. By acceding to the certification of these classes through the settlement Google will get a license from all authors and publishers of books covered by the agreement – meaning nearly every in-copyright book ever published in the US – so that it can commercialize them through Book Search.

In effect Google ends up with a monopoly on the largest digital library of books in the world. It will have incredible freedom to set prices and conditions for Book Search’s commercial services. Google will also be the only service legally able to sell orphan books and monetize them through subscriptions. For book authors to be able to any part of the money they will need to be registered with the Book Rights Registry (BRR); which is initially being funded by Google to the tune of $34.5 million, who will be receiving 63 percent of the revenues generated by Google’s Book Search.

Because of the high cost to any of Google’s competitors to get into this game it is unlikely that they will

Virtually the only way that Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo!, or the Open Content Alliance could get a comparably broad license as the settlement would give Google would be by starting its own project to scan books. The scanner might then be sued for copyright infringement, as Google was. It would be very costly and very risky to litigate a fair use claim to final judgment given how high copyright damages can be (up to $150,000 per infringed work). Chances are also slim that the plaintiffs in such a lawsuit would be willing or able to settle on equivalent or even similar terms.

Source: Pamela Samuelson – O’Reilly Radar

So for all practical purposes Google would now have a monopoly over the largest repository of books in the world. Cory Doctorow points out in his post about this news how this also gives Google a big leg up in even regular search over both Yahoo and Microsoft

But no one, not Google, not Santa Claus, should have this kind of leverage over the entire world of literature. It’s abominable. No one benefits when markets consolidate into a single monopoly gatekeeper — not even the gatekeeper, who is apt to lose its edge without competition to keep it sharp.

The publishers I spoke to about this were incredibly smug about it. Because the settlement gives them the power to keep new releases out of Google, they feel like they can use this to keep the company honest.

This is wrong.

New releases are the majority of the publishers’ business, but they’re not the majority of the market for books — and they’re only successful because of all the context created by the entire history of literature. If the publishers offer a sweetheart deal on searching new results to Yahoo, but can’t give Yahoo access to the orphan works and other catalog items to which Google alone has easy legal access, Yahoo’s search tool will never compete with Google’s. To understand why, imagine if Yahoo tried to compete with Google by offering a search engine that only indexed the last 30 days’ worth of web-pages: it’s true that most of the stuff I read on the web was written in the past 30 days, but the 40-50% of stuff I that wasn’t is often enormously important to me. In that world, I would have to flick constantly between searching Yahoo and Google to make sure I wasn’t missing stuff — and very quickly, I’d just default to Google.

At this point in time the judge in the lawsuit still has to approve the settlement so our only real hope for Google not getting this kind of monopoly is that the judge sees the danger of a possible monopoly and goes against the settlement. Given that the majority of judges trying to deal with these new technological and legal territories don’t have a real understanding about them I’m not holding out much hope that the judge will understand the implications.

Chances are that Google will prevail and as a result will become our new literary gatekeeper with no-one in a position to keep them honest.

Authors Guild blinks and gives Google a monopoly is a post from: The Inquisitr

We are pretty use to the crap that the RIAA and the MPAA like to spread around like fresh manure on a cow field but as of this week they have been joined by yet another trade organization that proves just how far out in left field they idiots are when it come to protecting their little fiefdoms. Yes the trade organizations for authors; the Authors Guild, has proven just how little they understand technology, the Internet and copyright in this day and age.

John Paczkowski quotes from a press release from the Guild in a post today

“[The Kindle's text-to-speech function] presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry,” the group said in a statement released Thursday. “Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon’s promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it’s far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly….we recommend that if you haven’t yet granted your e-book rights to backlist or other titles, this isn’t the time to start. If you have a new book contract and are negotiating your e-book rights, make sure Amazon’s use of those rights is part of the dialog. Publishers certainly could contractually prohibit Amazon from adding audio functionality to its e-books without authorization, and Amazon could comply by adding a software tag that would prohibit its machine from creating an audio version of a book unless Amazon has acquired the appropriate rights. Until this issue is worked out, Amazon may be undermining your audio market as it exploits your e-books.”

What it boils down to is that his Guild; which is suppose to be acting on behalf of it’s member authors, says that by creating an audio version of a book you are in fact creating a whole new product that is totally based on a copyrighted book. In other reports on this the Guild has even gone to the point of suggesting that any verbal or audio reproduction of a book is and infringement on a copyright and there for illegal.

As nuts as it might sound, a parent reading a bedtime story to their kids would fall under the Authors Guild classification of breaking a copyright and therefore subject to criminal prosecution. You just couldn’t make this type of bullshit up but somehow I am not the least bit surprised. I’m just flabbergasted that more of an uproar hasn’t happened over this.

In my opinion these Author Guild jerk offs should return to the rocks they crawled out from under and quit trying to come up with harebrained ideas that will only hurt the actuall authors they say that they represent.  

Only idiots like the Authors Guild could believe in this kind of crap is a post from: The Inquisitr