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Once more around the Google bush

Via the goddessly Tess....Missing the point entirely is Xeni Jardin, in an editorial in the LA Times.

If Google has its way, [the Authors' Guild] logic goes, we'll lose control over who can copy our work, and we'll lose sales. But Internet history proves the opposite is true. Any product that is more easily found online can be more easily sold.

True - any product that is more easily found online can be more easily sold. But this is not about sales. This is about copyright law. This is what seems to be the crux of so many arguments - the conflation of sales with law.

Again, I'm waiting for the Library of Congress and the US Copyright Office to jump in here, and so far, they haven't.

Also in the Sunday NY Times, Randall Stross talks up
AOL's strengths, which can be summarized thusly: Lazy subscribers. Don't want to give up that AOL email address....

At its membership core are the subscribers who chose the service because it made going online easy and insulated them from the unknown. These members have become comfortable where they are.

That will only take a company so far, frankly. Newspaper companies have been debating this for years, as more and more papers launch full-scale online presences...for free. Says Walker Lundy, formerly of the Philadelphia Inquirer, on
Romenesko:

There's an old expression that I think fits this situation; I think newspaper companies are eating their seed corn. I fear for their future because you just can't save your way into profit increases every year. If you're running a steak house, you still have to serve them steak.

One could say similar things about AOL. Until they offer something new, something that nobody else has, something that many people want, then they are...an also-ran. The rest is just creative accounting.
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Been to AOL yet? Just checking....

Free or not, I still don't find a reason to go there. Have you made it YOUR homepage yet?

Folks, if you want to build a business model around content - whether it's advertising-based
 or subscription-based, you have to make sure it's compelling content you can't get elsewhere. And frankly, I don't see anything on AOL that I can't get anywhere else.

That's all.
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Googliscious

Internetnews.com carries a story that explains more fully what Google's interpretation of "fair use" actually is.

Jonathan Band [an IP lawyer and expert on digital content] said that search engines rely on the concept of implied license for their Web indexing, assuming that webmasters have posted information online because they want it to be found. He pointed out that Web masters could place exclusion headers in their site code, telling crawlers to keep off.

"By giving publishers the opportunity to opt-out of the Print Library Project, Google is replicating the exclusion feature of the Internet," he concluded.

Which makes perfect sense. Except what Google's talking about replicating is not already on the web - which is the whole point of Google Print. What Google's doing is creating that online information database in the first place, and THEN indexing it. The indexing part is fine. It's creating the vast pool of unlicensed data to crawl in the first place that's up for debate.

The
Electronic Frontier Foundation equates what Google is doing to creating a card catalog. Which, again, is PART of what Google is doing. The OTHER part of what Google is doing is copying books into digital format so that they can index keywords, subject matter, etc. It's that "copying books into digital format" part that's got publishers' and authors' panties in a twist.

Now, if the publishers and authors were already doing this, and posting that content online for Google to crawl, that'd be one thing. But that is not what's going on here.

Personally, I think the idea of a massive digital database of all the books Google can get hold of is a great idea. I love the idea of being able to locate books as well as journal articles, blogs, personal websites, what have you.

But I do find the opting-out-of-scanning to be a little disturbing. I understand that the entire book won't be posted online and nobody's going to lose out. But that little frisson of "we had to copy your work for our project and we couldn't find you easily to get permission so we just went ahead and did it - if you don't want that, let us know" to be a little...well, it assumes that the value of Google Print is worth more than the value of an author's individual copyright.

And that's not how we operate under copyright law.

If Google were to work with the
Library of Congress, for example, that might be a different story entirely. Because all books which are copyrighted must be on deposit with the Library of Congress. If Google were to strike a deal with LC, and work WITH them, then perhaps we wouldn't be in this little pickle now.
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Now We're Getting Somewhere

Finally, Google's going to court. Shelf Awareness tells us this morning:

Three authors and the Authors Guild filed suit against Google yesterday, charging that the company's program to scan millions of books in several major libraries and make the texts searchable online constitutes "massive copyright infringement."

According to
Search Engine Journal,

Google is asking publishers to “opt-out” of the Google Print program during the next 2 months if the publishers do not want their books indexed in Google Print. Interesting tactic, especially since the whole idea behind copyrighting is to be legally opted out of anyone copying your works - even Google.

Google has of course responded in their own
blog on the issue. And to a degree, they have a point - if they are only posting snippets consistent with fair use conventions, then it's not such a big deal.

BUT...the trouble is, Google is not SCANNING snippets. They are scanning entire books for the purpose of their search engine - so that the search engine will make sure to pick up salient keywords that appear throughout the text of the book.

Even this is not so egregious...except that scanning the entire text of a book requires permissions. The libraries in question - Stanford, Harvard, et al - are giving THEIR permission. But is it the libraries' permission to give? Or is it the copyright holders' permission to give?

Google tells publishers, "If you don't want us to scan your titles, then tell us and we won't." But by doing that, publishers have to either enroll in Google Print as a partner (in a negative sense - a partner who is withholding titles from Google Print) - and thus become part of press releases and whatnot, whenever Google feels like letting the world know who its partners are (even if that partnership consists of not partnering - George Orwell is having a field day with this one).

OR, publishers have to let Google know in some abbreviated format not to scan their titles. I've taken a look at the
form. Copyright holders are submitting books for EXCLUSION. How does one submit anything for exclusion? Isn't the point of exclusion NOT SUBMITTING?

The more convoluted this language gets, the more I have to see the Authors' Guild's point. Yes, the cat's out of the bag - Google's going to digitize books and publishers have to get used to this. But that's not to say that publishers shouldn't have the option of not getting used to it if they don't feel like it - and take the consquences. Google's trying to force this issue by going to libraries and doing an end-run around publishers and authors is...ill-conceived at best.
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Pain Points

Folks, dual-numbering on bar codes (ISBN-10 and ISBN-13) is okay.

The truth is, if you make your books easy to sell, people will sell them. No bookstore is going to turn down your book because your bar code is aesthetically unappealing. If they can scan it (easily), then that's all they need to know.

Do not pay attention to fussbudgets telling you they won't accept product if it has dual numbering on it. If they really don't accept it, those particular fussbudgets won't be working at that company anymore.

For heaven's sake.
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Like I was saying....

Shelf Awareness reports this morning:

General retail sales figures for August show a tough retail climate--even before Hurricane Katrina hit. A sales decline of 2.1%, largely because of gasoline price rises that seem tame compared to early September's, was twice as high as forecasted.

Apparently retailers are leaping onto the blame-Katrina bandwagon pre-emptively.

MSNBC issued an interesting report yesterday. It seems that consumers are using their cars less - combining errands, looking to save gas - and so their shopping habits have changed.

The longer-term impact may well create even more business for one-stop-shop retailers like supercenters and warehouse club stores as we watch our expenses.

Additionally, this report implies, supermarkets will be increasing their offerings.

So, folks, if consumers are not getting in their cars and driving to the bookstore...why not increase the selection of books at the big-boxes and supermarkets? And if we're headed down that road, why not incorporate book industry data in the
Global Data Synchronization Network?

Because at some point it's not going to be a lovely nice-to-have; it's going to be essential if you want to sell books in this country. And as gas prices go up, as consumers dial back their spending, as retail consolidates, it's going to be essential sooner rather than later.
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Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

Next week's Fortune magazine appears with a - how shall we describe it - slavering hymn in praise of Thomas Friedman. Let me tell you, even God doesn't get it so good:

He dazzles crowds. He brews conventional wisdom. He charms CEOs. And he drives some people crazy. Meet Tom Friedman, the oracle of the Global Century.

And it goes on from there. The best part:
the little drawing of Friedman as a rock star.

I went gaga over Friedman's book, and promptly used it to find the goddessly
 and (and her programming guru of a husband, Hamid). I love the idea of a Bangalorean Craig's List. There are certainly many companies in India and China which are poised to do some wonderful things to speed up production (of just about everything) and productivity (of just about everyone).

This paean makes me wonder, though, about those 400,000 displaced Gulf Coast employees. Now that so many workplaces have been decimated, will folks embrace Friedman's outsourcing exuberance? Will labor become cheaper in the US as a result of the sudden glut of prospective workers on the market? Will Friedman be able to maintain his rock-star status or will his cred, like
Ashlee's, suddenly plummet? (And in that case, will we get a Beautifully Broken?)

This is going to be interesting.
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Okay, Back to Work, People

If we can turn our heads away from the Katrina coverage - and it's so difficult....A spy tells me that Len Riggio has promised a great deal of aid to B&N employees:

Nevertheless, you should know that, unlike some of the well-known national
retailers who have pledged anywhere from three days to two weeks' pay to their
employees, we will keep our booksellers on the payroll for at least three
months, and beyond that, depending on need and circumstances. Of course,
this includes medical coverage and other benefits as well.


Since many of our booksellers have already relocated, and many more have indicated plans to do so, we will be offering jobs to all, depending on the specific needs of our stores in each of the regions. Relocation expenses and other financial aid will be made available once we get a handle on what is needed.

The full memo is
here.

In other news, Bill O'Reilly was bitch-slapped by
Liz Smith today in a refreshing little item:

FOX NEWS emperor Bill O'Reilly tells us in Katrina's wake that if we — Americans — depend on the United States government for any reason, we are certain to be disappointed. Always. The government of the United States cannot help you. Bill's advice to America (to the poor of New Orleans, especially) is educate yourself and get a well-paying job. Only then can you avoid standing on a "metaphorical rooftop" when the next disaster rolls around. Bill did not give the poor any advice on how one finds a proper education or a job. Remember, the government can't help.

Indeed, if you're poor, just where in God's name are you supposed to find a decent education that might lead to a good job (which presumes that there ARE jobs to be had in the first place)? One thing that Katrina will spark, I sincerely hope, is a meaningful debate about poverty and why we associate it with moral deficiency.

Of course, we won't be having that debate
in this country.
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Raving Nutballs Occasionally Make Sense

A political burp: Lou Dobbs has adopted the party line about the Katrina refugees in New Orleans. Statistically, that's about right; nobody can be all whacked all the time. Now back to the nutshow.

Fortunately, Anderson Cooper is a tonic to everything - and I do mean
everything - as he sticks it to the powers that be. Only a Dalton-educated, Vanderbilt-heir, prematurely grey, blue-eyed white CNN boy could do what he did. Wonkette calls him "Secretary of Take-No-Shit". Amen, sister. We love our Anderson.

All right - business as usual. Google -
expanding to Europe. Horse out of barn, train out of station, cat out of bag, metaphor of your choice. Horse-train-cat not going back in again. What did I tell you.
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September 1, 2005

Meant to get here earlier in the week but I have been riveted to CNN. Jack Schafer at Slate manages to articulate what's been bothering me about the Katrina aftermath.

On the bookselling front, massive cheers to
Steve Riggio. Word has it that B&N employees in the stricken states can go into any Barnes & Noble or B. Dalton and get financial assistance and a place to stay. Steve keeps these kinds of things under his hat, but the fact is the man is phenomenally generous.

Personally, it's just horrifically surreal to see the
New Orleans convention center, where I spent ALA Midwinter 2002 (stayed right across the street at the Hampton Inn), with its windows blown out and turned into what amounts to...well, even the professionals can't describe this. CNN is now reporting from there, saying the place has "the worst possible conditions", and that the people there are "forced to live like animals" - "thousands and thousands of people laid out on the street" - people dying right in front of reporters. No buses seem to be coming to rescue people, abandoned by the beaurocracy they paid taxes to - the looting and the gangs terrorizing already-traumatized people - apparently there are "plans", but one wonders, after all the money we've paid to build up the Homeland Security department after 9/11, why is it so hard to get these plans executed immediately?

In other news, the goddessly Tess tells me that the
GAO has done a report on the rising cost of textbooks. Textbooks comprise approximately 26% of a student's tuition and fees, according to this report. The AAP has done its own report, placing the blame for rising costs squarely on what they call "textbook 'add-ons' - CD-ROMs and other supplemental materials."

Yeah, and we know that CD-ROMs cost about a nickel, so that obviously explains things.

When in doubt, blame technology. That appears to be working for FEMA.
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