Comments on: Author's Guild versus university libraries: a dead letter

By: Susan Carley Oliver

Susan Carley Oliver — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:36:00 +0000

“the local university”?! You wouldn’t be referring to one of the most prestigious public universities in the country, would you?

By: Margaret Louise Clarke

Margaret Louise Clarke — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:36:00 +0000

The authors/Authors’ Guild concern may come from the listing of well-known books, from active academics on their site. I found two in a minute.
The catch. You can not access their content. Not even as much as you can with Google Books.
The poster who mentioned “bibliographic info” got it. Great for capturing that.

By: Gulliver

Gulliver — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:55:00 +0000

To the Guild: do not emulate the RIAA, et al. You do not have the resources for proper supervillainy. That is all.

By: Baldhead

Baldhead — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:32:00 +0000

they do their homework- if they can’t find the author, they go ahead. Should i point out that if they have trouble finding an author then so will anyone looking to give that author money for the work? Hell, if history is any indication, people looking to pay the author will try a lot less hard than someone looking to publish it for free.

By: Janet Croft

Janet Croft — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:32:00 +0000

The Canadian system has a checklist the potential user of the work must go through to show they’ve used reasonable diligence in trying to find the rights owner. Basically, that’s what the Hathi Trust is doing, too, but there isn’t a US government-issued guideline for them to follow, alas, and then no US agency with which to file your intent to use the material. But the American library copyright community is well aware of the Canadian model and I’d be willing to bet that if you looked at the Hathi Trust’s internal procedures, they’d look pretty similar.

By: Adela Doiron

Adela Doiron — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:32:00 +0000

But that still depends on the rights holders knowing they’ve been made orphan. The default assumptions favours the user/potential rights violator not the rights holders and by the looks of it the bar for effort in determining orphan status is low. Or as Scrivener often puts it it’s about administrative convenience. At least in the Canadian system we make you do the homework first and then ask permission..

By: esme

esme — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:49:00 +0000

The problem with this line of reasoning is that every suggested approach to orphan works I’ve seen has a provision for rights holders to make themselves known. When that happens, the work is removed from the orphan category and gets handled like a regular work again, now that there’s a rights holder to talk to. So the works don’t become public domain — they simply get treated differently when there is no authorized source and no rights holder to ask for one.

The Authors Guild has a bunch of hypothetical problems (what if the servers get hacked? etc.), but the Hathi Trust is trying to solve a very real problem: researchers and students want electronic access to these works, and there is no legal way to provide it.

Disclaimer: I work at one of the libraries involved, though not with the Hathi Trust projects.

By: NickPheas

NickPheas — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:23:00 +0000

“Oh, and also, why is the Author’s Guild so annoyingly dense about orphaned works? ”

My guess is that they see it as the thin end of a wedge. If we accept that an out of print book should be assumed to be in the public domain because we can’t contact the author then it’s a smallish step to beleiving that out of print books per se become public domain. Which obviously could seriously damage an author’s chance of getting their books back in print.

By: dw_funk

dw_funk — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:24:00 +0000

For what it’s worth, Cory, “see here and here” in the linked post were almost certainly hyperlinks. I don’t know if there’s any kind of ethical call to be made about preserving links when quoting a source, but, you know. I guess I could click through.

Oh, and also, why is the Author’s Guild so annoyingly dense about orphaned works?

By: bill

bill — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:30:00 +0000

Flabbergasted was I to think that librarians of all people would infringe upon a writers slim means of sustenance, whether he be known or otherwise. But then the word appeared that made it all make sense: foundation.
Of course foundations have agendas and meticulously wield power through the manipulation of all media, but writers have agendas too, don’t they? Where do they get off sacrificing their health, well being and prosperity to art? Do they think they’re better than us or something.
There, I solved my own problem.

By: Andrew Singleton

Andrew Singleton — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:20:00 +0000

Crude yest, but the only thing i can think to say.What a bunch of douchmonkies. They don’t even have a dog in the fight yet claim these guys are doing ‘irrepeerable harm.’flatwat.jpg

By: William

William — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:59:00 +0000

These are the same punks that tried to stop Google’s book-scanning project a few years ago.

By: Kevin Boyle

Kevin Boyle — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:30:00 +0000

No, this is not Authors vs Libraries, it’s Lawyers vs Libraries. The Guild doesn’t represent a single actual author in this dispute.

By: Eark_the_Bunny

Eark_the_Bunny — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:24:00 +0000

And down the rabbit hole too. I should know.

By: Martain Chandler

Martain Chandler — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Authors vs. Libraries

We are through the looking glass now.