Law in Contemporary Society

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RyanSongFirstPaper 8 - 13 Apr 2010 - Main.EbenMoglen
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Google book settlement: the future for orphan works?

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 The main issue of the orphan work problem is the impossibility of bringing the user and the copyright holder together to bargain in an efficient way. Digitally archiving orphan works is great for preserving creative materials, and the liability rule is also the right approach when the transaction cost of bargaining is too high. However, the Settlement has abandoned the spirit of the liability rule and gives Google unbounded power to monopolize the orphan work online market. Therefore the court should order the Settlement to be amended. Google’s objective is to profit from digitally archiving all books, including orphan works and all other copyrighted materials. The court can use the other copyrighted materials as leverage and request Google to dedicate all its profits from orphan works to the purpose of locating copyright holders and compensating them for their works. This way, we can resolve the orphan work problem and everyone will benefit.
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This is a pretty competent recitation of the meaningless dispute so far conducted, which explains to a naive reader pretty much everything except why none of it matters.

In the first place, Google isn't going to make any money giving access to these books: they have a marginal cost of zero, being bitstreams, and in a competitive market, as you may have heard, price equals marginal cost. Contrary to supposition, the market will be fully competitive, because scanning books and releasing the bitstreams on the net is nearly costless now, owing to the book ripper, which can be built at present for less than $200, and the cheap sheet-fed tabletop scanners, which cost little more.

Within a few years, every book that exists anywhere will be scanned by anyone who comes across it, and all texts will circulate in the web the way all music does now. In that competitive market, making readers pay stupidity taxes to get what they could get for free will no longer be possible, and no one will be transacting for electronic texts at non-zero prices. This settlement, which is three-quarters bullshit and one quarter final period of play pathologies, will then be remembered as the irrelevancy it is.

 
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Revision 8r8 - 13 Apr 2010 - 01:07:01 - EbenMoglen
Revision 7r7 - 06 Apr 2010 - 02:37:15 - RyanSong
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