goyablog

I’ve been actively hoping that the settlement Google reached with the backward-looking and narrow-visioned coalition publishers and authors over the issue of scanning humankind’s books and making them available/for purchase to anyone with a computer would stand the antitrust tests it is being out to at the moment. In fact, I wanted Google to have even more freedom in digitizing everything ever published so that my dream of a searcheable downloadable ubër-mega-hyper-universal library would be one big step closer to reality. Alas, meddling capitalists worried about not getting their cut and/or Google getting too much appear headed to hamstringing Google’s gargantuan task. Wired.com has a pretty clear run-down on the history and current status of the issue in a Q&A form if you want to get up-to-date. I really have a problem with the sacred status copyright has been given. Protection of it is talked about as if it’s the holy of holies, as if it’s a sinful violation to copy something that’s out there in the public (i.e., published). In other words, it’s treated practically as a moral issue when it’s purely economic. Sure, an author (and his/her publisher) is entitled to sell and profit from a work. It’s a piece of work, after all, and it’s hard to produce (he says as he struggles to write two pages a day). But can’t there be some kind of a limit, some point (before the current expiration of copyright) where it’s okay to have parasites use the work for other things while perhaps throwing the author’s way a small percentage of any profits (or nothing if no profits are made)? I think so, but that must make me communist or something, like President Obama. Just think of the overall benefits to scholars, students, society at large. I can imagine fair cost structures where producers could be happy (because of increased volume sales) and consumers could be happy (with their Kindles or iPads or MacHackBooks) getting free or lower cost access to the world’s knowledge and entertainment. If this could happen, I wouldn’t care about a Google monopoly and so-called infringement of copyrights. Bring it on!