81–88 of 88 posts
If true, I'd count this decision as a net negative. (Sorry Google, your balance sheet means nothing to me.)
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May I ask where you scanned your books? I've used 1dollarscan.com before for some book scans, which worked pretty well.
Actually , if you're outside the u.s. and you're interested in buying a book that's not availble electronically from Amazon, the cheaper way is usually send it from Amazon directly to 1dollarscan, and they send you the scanned ebook by email.
It's good that this news report includes a citation to the case decision at the end of the article. That citation is Authors Guild v. Google Inc., 13-4829, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Manhattan) The ruling applies, of course, only to the United States, and only if it is not reversed by the United States Supreme Court. But I think the argument that Google's use of the book content is not market-destr…
I would love it if the publishers and google figured out a proper way to pay to read books that were still under copyright. I'd love to get rid of all my bookshelves knowing that if I wanted access to a particular book I could pay a few dollars and get it.
Why don't you pay one of the several startups doing book-scanning services?
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Actually , if you're outside the u.s. and you're interested in buying a book that's not availble electronically from Amazon, the cheaper way is usually send it from Amazon directly to 1dollarscan, and they send you the scanned ebook by email.
This is not an approach I had thought about - what is the turn around time?
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1dollarscan doesn't seem that good to me, what am I missing? It's $2 per 100 pages if you want OCR, and even then it's not clear what output format they're delivering -- it sounds like it's still a PDF? The entire point of eBooks to me is that you end up with actual text, not just scans. And $8 per average length novel seems like a lot just to chop a book in half, throw it through an auto-feed scanner, and run an OCR…
When I started scanning my library I signed up for the "platinum" program which is $100 for 100 sets (basically 10,000 pages) with most of the enrichments turned on (OCR, etc) I paid the $1/set uplift for 600 dpi for technical documents with complex diagrams and occasionally I opted for color scans for some things. For a textbook style book "chopping it in half and throwing it in a scanner" is a bit more work than th…
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Reading the article, I do not see how rejecting the settlement between Google and the Authors' Guild improved the situation vis-à-vis censorship and privacy. I also do not see how approving the settlmenet would have prevented others from reaching a similar arrangement with the Authors' Guild, since Google was not granted exclusive rights. Nor do I see how the settlement would have threatened fair use: it would only h…
With a finalized class settlement, Google would have stopped fighting for fair-use rights, and entered into a moneymaking partnership with the Authors' Guild with a unique right – established by the expansive class including all authors not yet even identified – to scan and even market books, and be immune from further lawsuits from the class. Anyone with shallower-pockets that then tried to do what Google did would…
Why wouldn't the Authors' Guild be willing to offer others the same terms? How would it benefit them to depend on Google? The agreement would have granted a new sort of status to Google, but there is no reason that status would have to remain unique.
Regarding the anti-trust angle, the wiki article cites an MIT paper that concludes the settlement would not violate anti-trust and would in fact generate a consumer surplus. [1]
Forcing Google to fight for fair-use may have been a sound Machiavellian strategy for the EFF (as it resulted in today's ruling), but it's ironic then that the main reason why the settlement was rejected seems to be because it was not strong enough on copyright, as expressed by individual authors' concerns over loss of control, and freeing of orphan works.
[1]: http://www.criterioneconomics.com/Google%20and%20the%20Prope...
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When I started scanning my library I signed up for the "platinum" program which is $100 for 100 sets (basically 10,000 pages) with most of the enrichments turned on (OCR, etc) I paid the $1/set uplift for 600 dpi for technical documents with complex diagrams and occasionally I opted for color scans for some things. For a textbook style book "chopping it in half and throwing it in a scanner" is a bit more work than th…
Do you share your scans (ignoring legality here), or are they all strictly personal?