Montreal city

Best regard.

Gaétan

1. PRECEDENT

Whatever the initial intentions of Google Books Library Project, the project was arguably illegal in its infringement of copyright, and at the very least constituted a serious abrogation of the traditional understanding of “fair use.” Since, under the settlement and its amendments, Google, in my understanding, has never admitted culpability in terms of the legality or conventionality of its actions, the settlement risks setting a dangerous precedent with regard to future rulings on copyright and on interpretations of such notions as “fair use.”

2. JURISDICTION

The settlement was reached between U.S. based groups with no consultation with groups outside the U.S., and has been scrutinized only by the U.S. courts. There seems no legal or ethical basis, therefore, for the inclusion in the agreement of territories outside the U.S. It is unclear to me, then, why Canada, along with Australia and Great Britain, remains included in the settlement, and has not lobbied to be removed from it as Ireland, India, New Zealand, and South Africa have successfully done.

3. COMPLEXITY

It is unreasonable to expect us to come to grips with an agreement of this level of complexity—and set in out in terms most of us have had no say in negotiating—within time limits we have had no say in setting. In any event, given that the issues the settlement raises are entirely new and that the full consequences of the settlement are not reasonably foreseeable by anyone at this point, though are potentially vast, we are essentially being asked to make decisions blindly, with no reliable information about outcomes on which to base those decisions.

4. NEGATIVE OPTION

Placing the onus on writers to opt out of an agreement that materially affects our rights but which we did not initiate and which we have had no say in negotiating is at the very least unethical and is arguably illegal, under the same arguments that have been made, for instance, in outlawing negative option marketing in Canada.

5. MONOPOLY

Google currently represents an unprecedented concentration of information and knowledge within very few hands, a concentration that stands to be greatly enhanced through the Google Book project. To date, it has had relatively little government oversight. Increasingly, it is taking on functions and powers that have traditionally been those of public institutions, even though it is a for-profit corporation with primary responsibility to its shareholders rather than to the public good.

Google derives some 98% of its income from advertising. In others words, it creates value for itself using content it has not created, does not own, and has not received permission to use, namely the contents of the internet, and it does so essentially by selling information to advertisers that it has gleaned from user searches. Google Books would greatly extend the content-base against which Google could accumulate information, and hence greatly increase its value and profitability. Given the leadership Google now enjoys in terms of search, and the unprecedented resources it is able to mobilize for projects like Google Books, there is a real risk that the company will come to occupy a near monopoly position in terms of the world’s digital knowledge, opening up the chance for serious abuse. With regard to Google Books, writers may find themselves in a position where their works are being used to generate advertising income for Google in ways over which they have no control and that may run entirely counter to their own ethics or beliefs.