Google vs Authors

Richard Russo, writing for Medium:

Issues of ownership and fair play are at the heart of The Authors Guild’s lawsuit against internet giant Google, which has, without permission from authors and without paying for their copyrighted material, digitized millions of their books while ignoring, as if these were irrelevant, their creators’ claims to ownership. Google has justified this theft by arguing that the use they were making of our property was “transformative,” a public service. They wouldn’t be selling our books for profit, just providing a research tool that displays only snippets, which would fall under the doctrine of “fair use.” More information would be available to more people. Ignoring the original theft, the courts have so far agreed.

I’ve had a number of books appear on Google Books (go here, then do a search for “Dave Mark”). I was never asked my opinion about including these books in the process, and I was certainly never asked permission, even though I own the copyright on most of these.

A real sign of popularity of a book is that moment when someone on the internet makes a copy of the book and puts it on a warez site. I’ve watched this happen again and again. There’s no stopping it. As these downloads start appearing, you can issue takedowns, but the same content will just appear on a different site in a matter of hours. There’s a sense of powerlessness that comes over you. Once you release your book, you no longer have control over it.

That same feeling hit me the first time I saw one of my books on Google Books. As Richard says:

What would I and my fellow authors have done if Google had come to us, respecting our ownership of what we’d created, and asked our permission? I guess we’ll never know, because they didn’t feel the need.

If only they had asked.