I am very grateful to Robin Fry, a copyright expert and Partner at Beachcroft LLP, one of the largest national commercial law firms in the UK, for his comments on Google Books. I had contacted Robin Fry following release by Beachcroft LLB of a press release calling for an ovehaul of the provisions in the Digital Economy Bill (- Beachcroft LLP’s press release can be read here: http://www.beachcroft.co.uk/article.aspx?id_Content=1461).
As many will now know the Digital Economy Bill has, in my opinion, a wrong-minded approach to issues of copyright and piracy and, as a previous blog posting of mine asserts, the UK government is at present engaged in a peculiarly misguided attack on so-called ‘piracy’ on the one hand whilst on the other remains silent about Google Books when other key European leaders (Germany and France) have, on behalf of their writers and authors, opted out of the Google Books settlement. It is on these main assertions in my original blog (below) that I asked Robin Fry to comment, and as Robin Fry’s remarks below demonstrate, the Digital Economy Bill does nothing to clear up the confusion:
Robin Fry: “There is a real danger that publishers with large back-catalogues may enter into global licensing deals with Google without being certain that the original author-publisher agreements permit this. Authors could then use the new procedures contemplated by the Digital Economy bill to challenge both Google and the users who thought they were accessing these texts legitimately.
“The Digital Economy bill does nothing to free up content which had been licensed for the old economy apart from for ‘orphan works’ which are still not defined. It’s surprising that there should be such an obsession with file-sharing when far greater damage may be caused to authors whose copyrights are stripped away and sold on to Google without their permission. Isn’t that just a different kind of copyright infringement? ” [Ends].
Once again, my thanks to Robin Fry for these fascinating comments. Full details of Robin Fry’s work can be found at: http://www.beachcroft.co.uk/person.aspx?id_Content=769
It’s not another kind of piracy it’s the same old fashioned kind. We see the book industry taking the same steps as the music industry (whether it’s right to do this or not is a totally different subject) but they don’t drag Google into court for copyright infringement – well some of them did but they accepted a bribe. Seems if you’re Joe Bloggs ripping books and CDs and Movies you’re a thief. If you’re Google doing the ripping it’s a legitimate enterprise.