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Compulsory License Would Eliminate Need for Lawsuit

by Pamela Parker

Yesterday’s post mentioned compulsory licensing for some written works. Such a system could be used to avoid lawsuits such as the one involving Google and it’s quest to digitize and index libraries. A summary of the basis for the suit is in a press release here, but the suit is still going on.

Imagine if there were a compulsory license system in place. Google decides to launch this library indexing project, it checks the statutory rates, pays into the copyright office the rate times the number of books in the library, and off they go. Authors are happy, Google is happy. Well, maybe Google is not happy, because right now they are taking the books for free. Oh wait, they’re not really saving money, though, because they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend their “right” to not pay for use of the books.

Hmmm . . .

Why wouldn’t Google just take the hundreds of thousands of dollars they are spending anyway and give it to the authors?

Hmmmm .. . . .

Maybe because establishing that they have a right to do it fro free means they can get more things for free in the future. I wonder what Google will be digitizing next?


Posted in General on March 27th, 2007

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Copyright touches writers, music lovers, teachers, musicians, businesses, artists, amateur filmmakers, students, libraries, and publishers – to name just a few! In other words, these days everyone is affected by copyright and everyone needs to have at least a basic understanding of it. Copyright Talk discusses issues and developments everyone needs to know about.

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