You were going to get one-click access to the full text of nearly every book that's ever been published. Books still in print you'd have to pay for, but everything else—a collection slated to grow larger than the holdings at the Library of Congress, Harvard, the University of Michigan, at any of the great national libraries of Europe—would have been available for free at terminals that were going to be placed in every local library that wanted one.
At the terminal you were going to be able to search tens of millions of books and read every page of any book you found. You'd be able to highlight passages and make annotations and share them; for the first time, you'd be able to pinpoint an idea somewhere inside the vastness of the printed record, and send somebody straight to it with a link. Books would become as instantly available, searchable, copy-pasteable—as alive in the digital world—as web pages.
It was to be the realization of a long-held dream. "The universal library has been talked about for millennia," Richard Ovenden, the head of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries, has said. "It was possible to think in the Renaissance that you might be able to amass the whole of published knowledge in a single room or a single institution." In the spring of 2011, it seemed we'd amassed it in a terminal small enough to fit on a desk.
"This is a watershed event and can serve as a catalyst for the reinvention of education, research, and intellectual life," one eager observer wrote at the time.
On March 22 of that year, however, the legal agreement that would have unlocked a century's worth of books and peppered the country with access terminals to a universal library was rejected under Rule 23(e)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
When the library at Alexandria burned it was said to be an "international catastrophe." When the most significant humanities project of our time was dismantled in court, the scholars, archivists, and librarians who'd had a hand in its undoing breathed a sigh of relief, for they believed, at the time, that they had narrowly averted disaster.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:58PM
The legal agreement was bullshit.
It gave google special permission to break the law, but everybody else was still constrained by the law.
The only thing worse than a shitty law is a shitty law with special exceptions for the rich and powerful.
If google cared about the benefit to humanity rather than the benefit to google's bottom line they would have lobbied hard for the law to be fixed.
(Score: 2) by driven on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:06PM (8 children)
I'm surprised they couldn't turn this around and charge some all-access fee to make authors happy, like all you can watch movies on Netflix or all you can listen to music on Google Play -- except with books.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:38PM (6 children)
I'm surprised they couldn't turn this around and charge some all-access fee to make authors happy,
The problem isn't with the authors per se (although the authors guild challenged it) the problem is that they can't find the authors (or their estates) to make deals with them. Orphan works are a big problem with copyright law that needs fixing. Google had a chance to lobbying for it to be fixed. They tried to negotiate a special exception instead. It was ridiculously myopic of them.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:05PM
copyright law [...] needs fixing
This derivative work is permitted under subsection 8 of paragraph gamma, chapter 78.34 recurring of...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:26PM (3 children)
Orphaned works have no authors, they are orphans. Off to the public domain for them! Better than falling in with some unsavory types like Fagin and the Artful Dodger. And guess who got published illegally in the United States, ignoring British copyright claims?
(Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:36PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:38AM (1 child)
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:47AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:05PM
Orphan works are a big problem with copyright law that needs fixing.
Indeed. They should pass a law that says as soon as a work is out of print, it automatically enters the public domain. In this day and age there should be no such thing as "out of print".
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:39PM
There isn't any ASCAP for books that could sort out the royalties. Unlike composers who, I believe, almost all sign up with a publishing company, authors don't all sign up with Author's Guild or other independent organization that could track the "reads" or "views". ASCAP (as I understand it) was formed as a reaction to "free plays" of songs on the radio, in stores, and in other settings, long ago.
Some (no idea what fraction) of those 25 million books that Google scooped up are:
a) still under copyright
b) still making income for the authors -- some books keep selling and generating steady (if small) royalties.
I should know, the reference book I co-authored, (c) 1994, still pays me about $5K/year because it's been picked up as a text for an engineering elective at a number of universities. Yes, I got a little lucky. And yes, it's available as a crappy scan, but my publisher does a fairly good job of keeping it off the more popular warez sites.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:18PM (4 children)
Hey publishers, sue google for digitizing them without permission in the first place. Then watch as they crush your sorry ass, buy ownership and do whatever the hell they want with your precious books.
Copyright needs to be abolished, for the common good.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:38PM (3 children)
Copyright was never intended to be the vast money making machine it is today. It was intended to be limited in duration. A benefit to authors for a short term. Then the work should become public domain for the benefit of all. Imagine if the public domain that existed before 1910 were no longer available to all?
Copyright rights have fractured into many shards. Mechanical rights. Performance rights.
Collection Societies have emerged which can't even keep track of the artists and works they allegedly represent. Their business model is to coerce the payment of large blanket licensing fees "just in case" one of their represented works is covered. Even if it isn't.
For example, performance rights have been construed to even cover an individual, such as a mechanic, playing the radio in a garage, within earshot of the public.
The DMCA is a travesty of justice. Super powers to quickly take something off the internet, but with no accountability, even after swearing under penalty of perjury. How about: a statutory fine for false DMCA takedowns that equals the statutory fine for copyright infringement. I think that is $150,000, if I remember correctly.
Record labels are a parasite on both artists and the public. Then there is the motion picture industry.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:40PM (2 children)
Copyright was never intended to be the vast money making machine it is today. It was intended to be limited in duration.
No, it was not. Thus preserving the right to read [gnu.org] which is getting more and more contested as time goes on.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:18PM (1 child)
Copyright was never intended to be the vast money making machine it is today. It was intended to be limited in duration.
No, it was not
Yes, it was:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday April 27 2017, @07:39PM
Copyright was never intended to be the vast money making machine it is today. It was intended to be limited in duration.
No, it was not
Yes, it was:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Well, that's just it: The difference between securing exclusive rights for limited times and producing a vast eternal money making machine. That's what we mean when we say, above, that Copyright was never intended to be the monkey-making machine it is now, but rather, was "intended to be limited in duration."
Take this difference over the lifetime of the work of, for example, "Snow White." [wikipedia.org]*
Published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 as "Tale #53, 'Schneewittchen'", "Snow White" featured the storybook concepts of a magic mirror, a poisoned apple spell, a coffin made of glass, the evil queen, and the Seven Drawfs.
By 1937, this work was out of copyright worldwide--as it should have been--and as such, Disney was able to release a derivative work, an animated feature film which they titled "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
But don't get your hopes up on doing the same thing that Disney did... Copyright as it was then is dead, replaced now with ever extending terms such as life+70 years (egregious enough) and beyond. The trans-pacific partnership, whose fate is admittedly uncertain at this point, even includes language barring fair use rights among signatory countries and extends the worst, least favorable rights of any of the countries to them all, so that "businesses may profit" and "trade may abound."
Meaning that a few existing rightsholders may profit from trade abounding in squeezing ever-more profit from their already-extant works now protected nearly to infinity, instead of everyone able to be unrestrictedly creative, expanding from and upon an ever growing public domain which is valuable to all rather than to a select few.
So, to sum up, copyright was then a protection for a limited time for the balanced good of all, and now is an evil mantle which cloaks, steals, and seals away all works which may or may not have already been touched by a select few.
To use words of one syllable: It was good, but now it is bad. Real bad.
---
*Snow White--or Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc. ad nauseum--reworks of public domain stories, some barely out of public domain at that. The choice of Disney as an example [roarofwolverine.com] here is not random.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:24PM
Imagine if the accumulated knowledge within a century of books were to be elevated up to the level of 4chan, Twitter and The Kardashians. Would we be be able to handle the profound effect this could wreck upon our society? Ignoring other large scale effects, think of the profound effect upon voters and politics.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:36PM (9 children)
Leave the U.S.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:41PM
Canada would build a wall. Sadly, I wouldn't blame them.
If another country put a bumbling illiterate clown circus into power, would we want their citizens coming into our country?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:38PM (6 children)
You mean: leave the U.S. because of its heavy-handed copyright regime, right? I would think that you'd also want to avoid WIPO member states. That leaves several options:
Non-members are the states of Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Solomon Islands, South Sudan and East Timor. The Palestinians have observer status.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO [wikipedia.org]
I'm assuming that states with limited recognition--the likes of Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Somaliland--aren't in WIPO either, and of course there's terra nullius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states [wikipedia.org]
Were Google to set up shop in a small country in order to distributed works that are copyrighted elsewhere, that country might be pressured to strengthen its copyright laws.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:14AM
*distribute, not distributed
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @11:58AM (4 children)
Put it on a submarine that travels the seas and transmit the works? or a satellite?
In the latter case, anyone with a satellite receiver can get them..
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:35PM (3 children)
I was thinking put it on the Moon and then every moon rise you can get the sum total of human knowledge beamed back at you. Also doubles as a timeless memorial of human civilization that will likely end soon.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:57PM (2 children)
Micro satellite, solar panels and a laser perhaps could make it work?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:07PM (1 child)
It sounds like an excellent candidate for a crowd-sourcing project: "Help archive human knowledge in a timeless repository on the Moon."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:59PM
Next problem is how one gets 60 PB of data broadcasted to many people on the ground in reasonable time.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:11PM
The problem is, ALL countries now have hyper-restrictive copyright laws. The US was the last holdout; the British started excessive copyright terms, and was quickly followed by the rest or Europe, then the world.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by DmT on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:38PM (17 children)
Can't someone hack it, leack it and then share via torrent?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:50PM (1 child)
Someone can just walk out with it on a flash drive.
That was intended as humor. Then it struck me. Seriously. Would it fit on a modern 128 GB SD Card? Or a pocket 4 TB drive?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:30AM
The article says "it’s 50 or 60 petabytes."
[...] the US Library of Congress “had collected 235 terabytes of data by April 2011 and a petabyte is more than four times that."
-- http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/What-does-a-petabyte-look-like [computerweekly.com]
So, Google's database is roughly 212 to 262 LOCs. You'd need several drives.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:51PM (14 children)
Would the torrent system handle a 227 Terrabyte file? Because that's the size magnitude we are talking about.
(ie 2.5e14 bytes)
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:29PM (11 children)
A torrent-like system where people only have a small part of the whole, and you can request a section from those who have it, with nobody having the whole thing, is a pretty interesting concept.
Legally, it would be fun too, especially if every chunk was small and encrypted so nobody has anything more than a few words which are useless without context.
The giant distributed Internet library...
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:59PM (9 children)
"Hello?"
"Hi. According to the listings you have volume S of Le Grand Encyclopedia?"
"Yep."
"I was hoping to borrow it. Any interest in trading for G?"
"Hmm. I've already read G; got any other letters?"
"Well, I was thinking about rereading R but..."
"R's on my to-do list."
"Alright. Standard shipping okay with you?"
"Sounds good."
Sometimes you just can't beat the bandwidth of a station wagon full of hard drives :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:31PM (8 children)
Even harddrives is not sufficient in this case. A better option is a femtolaser hitting a fused quartz disc which gives a capacity of 360 TB. Which will make it possible to fit it ALL on one disc.
Image that, all that is in several major libraries in one disc with a diameter of circa 5 cm with room to spare.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:16PM (3 children)
If you are referring to this [petapixel.com], that's a theoretical capacity, not anything available on the market. Getting new technologies to market can be very difficult. We were supposed to have 1 TB Blu-ray discs and 6 TB holographic discs by now. Instead, we went from 25 GB Blu-ray to 100-128 GB Blu-ray.
What we do have coming pretty soon are 32-100 TB SSDs [zdnet.com]. Even a 3.5" sized one could fit into some very baggy pants pockets. A 250 TB drive capable of fitting the purported 227 TB sized library is not far behind... it would probably require a future generation of 3D QLC NAND [tomshardware.com]. For example, 128-144 layer 3D QLC NAND. Endurance isn't an issue since you would write once for this particular application. Demand for NAND is downright insatiable, and these capacities will be reached at some point in the next 5 years.
If your pants pockets could fit a 3.5" drive, you would not need to wait for the 128+ layer 3D QLC NAND, since Toshiba/etc. (the NAND/electronics division of Toshiba is likely to be sold to Western Digital or Broadcom) could probably create a 250 TB 3.5" SSD with 64-layer 3D QLC NAND and TSV die stacking.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:05AM (1 child)
> Endurance isn't an issue since you would write once for this particular application.
Flash memory is subject to data loss from " "charge de-trapping" (leakage), which can be counteracted by having the controller rewrite the data ("flash correct and refresh"). Even when the user isn't explicitly doing writes, they may still be happening.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~omutlu/pub/flash-memory-data-retention_hpca15.pdf [cmu.edu]
Write hot and store cold?
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2899473/ssd-issues.html [tomshardware.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:24AM
Fair point, but should still be enough endurance to smuggle data out of Google or whatever the dumb scenario is, and maybe actively seed a torrent for a few years. The large capacity 3D NAND drives can easily implement overprovisioning so the controller can maintain the data longer.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @11:54AM
I know the 360 TB drive isn't on the market and will likely not be for a long time. The point is however it can be done and there are people that can build these kinds of tools. Have a look at this trailer [youtube.com] at position 1:32 to get what kind of situation you may need to handle. No 3,5" drives, that's for sure.
Seems this optical disc technology uses position, size and orientation besides the standard on-off. Any idea how the "orientation" is done? polarization? I'll assume the laser is more a on-off thing.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:33AM (3 children)
And tapes (Toshiba, Fujifilm/IBM) has had protypes up to 220TB (uncompressed) per cartridge since 2015.
Curious about how the patent dispute (tape) will pan out.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:55PM (2 children)
Which patent dispute on tapes?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
https://www.google.se/search?q=fujifilm+tape+patent [google.se]
Sorry for dumping a google link, but it seemed like the best way to get multiple sources
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:01PM
Seems like a complicated lawsuit.
These US patents seems to be what the dispute is about per 2017-01-16 [ipwatchdog.com]:
7016137, Tape Drive Apparatus, Recording and/or Reproducing Method, and Recording Medium. It claims a tape drive apparatus with a means for detecting inconsistencies in read/write operations which can identify potential tampering.
6345779, titled Data Storage Cartridge Having a Retainer for a Leader Pin. It protects a data storage cartridge with a new leader pin configuration which prevents the pin from becoming dislodged if the cartridge is dropped.
6896959, entitled Magnetic Recording Medium Having Narrow Pulse Width Characteristics. This discloses a dual-layer magnetic recording medium using magnetic pigments in one of the magnetic layers.
7115331, same title as ‘959 patent. It also claims a dual-layer magnetic recording medium which utilizes the characteristics of metallic pigments.
Looks like a corporate cat fight ;)
Given Sonys stance on Linux on PlayStation. I'll guess I'm more sympathetic to Fujifilm.
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:35AM
> The giant distributed Internet library...
Files on Freenet are typically split into multiple small blocks, with duplicate blocks created to provide redundancy. Each block is handled independently, meaning that a single file may have parts stored on many different nodes.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet#Distributed_storage_and_caching_of_data [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
> 2.5e14 bytes
The article says "50 or 60 petabytes" which is about 200 to 240 times more.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:17PM
So 6e16 - 7e16 bytes then.
Or 171 x 360 TB optical discs. This project seems instantly more complicated.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:02PM (3 children)
Release the works as copyright goes away. In the US it's authors life span + 70 years. In most sane parts of the world works published before 1947 is now public domain.
Now many mishaps could happen. Some experimental high density disk with Petabyte capacity could be stolen.. Or someone could simply have a lot of books scanned in a country with very lax laws.. Just saying! :-)
Before we had book burning. Today criminalize book access instead ;-)
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:13PM (1 child)
It makes more sense to lobby for shorter copyright terms.
We have this mess, at least in part, because Disney has successfully lobbied for copyright extensions every time Mickey Mouse was at risk of falling into the public domain. They even rub it in our faces by playing steamboat Willie at the beginning of some movies now.
I would not even object to Mickey Mouse evolving into a Trademark (which is allowed/intended to last indefinitely).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:15PM
Then let's hope there will be a torrent release that contains ALL Disney productions..
Btw, nice office they got...... ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:38PM
I guarantee you Trump will sign another copyright term extension act bumping it up to life+90 / 120 years since the last 20 year extension was almost 20 years ago. Gotta protect Steamboat Willie.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by shanen on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:37PM (2 children)
Or perhaps I should ask "Why now?"
Not saying that the digital book project was a bad idea, though I did have substantial concerns about the google's plans to monetize it, and that was even before I realized how evil the google was becoming. I even wish I had access to such a database of books, and would have considered reasonable 'usage-based' fees even for the books in print, but... I still don't see the point of this front-page article on Soylent News.
If the "real" topic is the google, then I would note that the google's current de-facto motto is "All your attention are belong to us" and the original mission of making all of the world's information accessible and useful has already been completely overwhelmed. Long before they got to all of the information, they were forced to prioritize, and the highest priority went to the information of the paying advertisers with profit as the metric of utility. The "winners" are all corporations and any benefits to any actual human beings have become incidental.
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.
(Score: 2, Informative) by charon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:48PM
Because the article was just published last week by The Atlantic, and saturnalia0 found it interesting and wished to share it. If you want to go a step further back and ask why The Atlantic published it now, I could not say for sure. However, there is a sentence in the middle of the article which has some possible relevance: "(Earlier this year, a Second Circuit court ruled finally that Google’s scanning of books and display of snippets was, in fact, fair use.)" So perhaps the original author saw that news and decided to write about the root cause of it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:16PM
Because it's been in the press recently. I've seen several articles about it on Google News.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by pen-helm on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:17PM (1 child)
The service seems to be up and useable: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/about/ [google.com]
Some books are online. Some books it will only show "snippets."
(Score: 1) by pen-helm on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:04AM
https://archive.org/ [archive.org] also appears to have books online.