Bezos Doesn't Like Google's Book Settlement Either

Google’s (GOOG) book settlement with the Author’s Guild has drawn an unusual number of critics and an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice. Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jefrey Bezos doesn’t like it either.

Asked about the settlement onstage Tuesday at Wired’s Disruptive By Design Conference, Bezos replied:

That settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited. It doesn’t seem right that you should kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights. The class action settlement law . . . , you can’t believe that is the way it actually works.

Google’s book settlement gives it a blanket right to display the text of any orphan work (unclaimed books still under copyright), and to sell digital copies of such works. Since the majority of book actually fall under this category, the settlement would in effect give Google an exclusive right to show or sell these books. Amazon, the world’s largest book store, is not part of the settlement and would have no legal way to sell these same books without exposing itself to copyright violations.

There is a way out of this. As I’ve suggested before:

Google should amend some of the terms of the settlement to make it non-exclusive and the Author’s Guild should extend the same terms to any other company or organization that wants to digitize orphan books.

In other words, Google needs to free the orphans. Don’t make this just a deal between authors and Google. Make it a deal between authors and any existing or future book digitizer.

Bezos also had some good advice for company founders and entrepreneurs: “Be stubborn on the big things and be flexible on the details.”

On failure, he pointed out that only rarely is the cost of failure more than the cost of not trying anything at all:

One of the reasons companies are so non-experimental is that they over-dramatize how expensive failure is going to be.

Failure is not that expensive. You almost never hear a company criticized for failing to try something

As long as it is not a bet-the-company kind of failure, most companies can survive. Amazon has tried and failed at auctions and search, for example. But its bets on Web services and the Kindle are paying off. The winners pay for the losers. That is important to remember.

Original post

Comments

[jerry w.:]

Goog is still the best investment you can make. Buy, buy, buy. j.w.

Jun 16 12:35 PM

[Roger Knights:]

Goog? Check out Rambus! (RMBS)

Jun 16 05:02 PM

[Personanondata:]

"Since the majority of book actually fall under this category"

I (and a few others) would be very interested to hear more about your analysis on this point; just how did you come up with that "fact"?

Jun 17 08:07 AM

[Inkling:]

It might help to look at the data surrounding Erick Schonfeld's prediction that the majority of the books Google intends to display will be orphaned works, meaning that the copyright holder has not given Google permission for that display.

But before we do that, we should take note of the current situation. The books that Google scanned and were sued about were in university libraries. That means their authors were much more likely to be well read and aware of what was going on, particularly in the university community. Also note that the lawsuit and settlement have been given far more news coverage than anything that will follow, should the settlement be approved.

That means that what we have at present is a best-case scenario: the best publicity for the best informed group. Any later scanning by Google will show a poorer rate of return.

Now we need to find out just how many authors of currently scanned 'orphan works' have stepped forward. The quote that follows came to me personally from an email by Michael Boni, the court-appointed lawyer representing the 'author subclass' in this dispute. I am the "you" he is addressing.

***QUOTE***
Like others who have criticized the settlement, you erroneously assume there will always be a vast body of works improperly characterized as “orphan works.” In fact, already over 26,000 “parents.” i.e., rightsholders, of approximately 600,000 so-called “orphaned works” have arisen from the dead and claimed those works. Those numbers will continue to rise significantly in the upcoming months and years, and when the Registry is up and running.
**END QUOTE**

Do the math. 26,000 out of 600,000 means that just over 4 percent of authors in this initial, best-case scenario resulted in someone registering and either opting in or out. But for the court's extension of the deadline from May 5 to September 4, the other 96 percent would have already been forcible opted in without their knowledge or permission.

Those are the numbers direct from someone who ought to know. All but 4 percent of the books in the initial scan are, in Google's terms, 'orphan works.' That's not only a majority, that's an overwhelming majority.

The numbers will never get any better than that. If this settlement is approved, Google's scanners will go into overdrive and their publicity machine will sink into hibernation. The numbers of copyright holders in the registry will shrink to 3 percent, to 2 percent and then perhaps below 1 percent.

When that happens, Google and Google alone will 'own' the right to display most of the out-of-print books in the world without the copyright holders' permission. Given the terms of the settlement, no one else will be able to display those books and the Registry will have no contact information for more than perhaps 1-2 percent of those titles. Others won't even be able to contact these authors for permission.

This brings up an important question. Why hasn't anyone forced Google to reveal in greater detail figures such as these? All we've been getting from Google is soft and squishy marketing speak.

--Michael W. Perry, Seattle

Jun 17 11:55 AM