The Author's Guild Does Not Speak For Me

I'm a card-carrying member of the Author's Guild, but I won't be for long if they continue with colossally short-sighted stunts like their recent suit against the Google Library Project. I could say more about it, but Tim O'Reilly said exactly what I've been thinking -- and more -- in his superb op-ed in today's Times. Here's the key point:

A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn't, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now.

Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them.

I've always taken what I consider to be a middle ground on IP issues: I don't have de facto objections to a little digital rights management (I think, for instance, that the iTunes DRM is a reasonable compromise), and while I'm a huge admirer of Larry Lessig, I've also written a few things that have been critical of his positions over the years. I think, obnoxious as they are, that the music industry execs are not entirely wrong to call file sharing stealing. But what Google Library is doing is in no way a violation of my rights as an author. As Tim says, they're actually doing us all a service. We should be thanking them for Google Library, not taking them to court.

Comments

[Persimmon]

Please don't quit: What seems to be needed is to inform the Authors Guild members!

Reading their web site is a joke on this issue, full of dire sounding warnings about this "theft" of "your hard work."

I'd really love to see you, Corey, Lessig, O'Reilly, etc., really reach out to the members of the Authors Guild, most of whom probably have no idea what the real issues are, here, and explain it. Don't just let the Guild lawyers frame this issue: tell the members yourselves just why this is silly.

O'Reilly's OpEd is a great start, and needed.

But to continue to make most of these arguements in the blogosphere isn't sufficient *to reach those authors in the Guild who don't already read these sources* and who are most in need of some quick education!

Please?

[Folderol]

Non sequitur but ... How logistically is Google accessing the content of the books for searches? Are they manually scanned?

[Brett]

On hearing of Google Library, my first thought was, "Finally, now I can find things in books I'm looking for without having to flip through all the pages. Even better, I can find books I've not yet read that have something of interest." Kind of like a huge index for all books, not just one.

My second thought was, "Authors are going to love this. What a great way for them to get their books found, especially those 'obscure' books that most people may never know about. "

It's nice to see that at least some authors understand the real value of this project, not only for themselves but for the world at large. Hopefully the rest will come around and get the Author's Guild to retract this silly suit.

[dru]

I think there's a basic need to distinguish between the interests of corporations that own publishing houses and the authors themselves. Are their interests really so closely tied?

[Aidan]

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