Wicked (fun) stuff from Authors Guild

The Authors Guild is pleased to announce the launch of WhoMovedMyBuyButton.com, which is now live in fully-functional beta form.  Who Moved My Buy Button? allows authors to keep track of whether Amazon has removed the "buy buttons" from any of their books.

Simply register the ISBNs of any books you'd like monitored, and our web tool will check daily to make sure your buy buttons are safe and sound.  If there's a problem, we'll e-mail you an alert.

Although we've launched WhoMovedMyBuyButton.com in response to Amazon's wholesale removal of buy buttons from Macmillan titles, we believe Amazon should be monitored for years to come.  Amazon's developed quite a fondness for employing this draconian tactic (there's a chronology at the website); it's only grown bolder with its growing market clout.

Vigilance is called for: sounding off is our best collective defense.  Register your ISBNs today -- it's free and open to all authors, Guild members and not.  (Though we'd prefer you join.)

Here's a screen shot from the new site:



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Also Quoted with permission

Authors Guild:

As you may be reading in today's paper, the Justice Department in its filing regarding our settlement with Google continues to see legal problems with the settlement, focusing on class action law but also continuing to raise some antitrust concerns. We disagree with the Justice Department's reading of the law. At the same time, it's good to see the Department recognizes the settlement's many benefits. In our view, it's best for everyone that out-of-print library books be made available through reasonable, market-based means to readers, students and scholars. Without a settlement, that won't happen. It's also best that authors have direct control of the scans that Google has made, with the power to compel Google to hide, display or remove those scans. Without a settlement, authors have no such control. Google's scanning and use of authors' books would continue until the lawsuit was finally resolved.

Some authors and authors' groups have asked why we didn't press the litigation through to the end. The answer (besides the benefits we saw for authors in creating new markets for out-of-print works), in part, is that copyright litigation is uncertain. Fair use law is complex. One could fill a good-sized law-school classroom with copyright professors who believe that Google's scanning of your books is a fair use. We don't agree with that view, but our opinion may not have prevailed. If we'd lost, it would then be open season on scanning of your out-of-print and in-print books. All one would need is a scanner and a friend with a little bit of technical knowledge to start displaying "snippets" at your science fiction, humor, Civil War, or Harry Potter website. All perfectly legal; all without obligation to authors to properly secure those scans. Nothing gets illegal file-sharing going quite so much as millions of unsecured digital works floating around the Internet.

We also could've won. That would've been sweet. But here's the thing: copyright victories tend to be Pyrrhic in the digital age. Our settlement negotiations went on with full knowledge of what happened to the music industry. The RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) won victory after victory, defeating Napster and Grokster with ground-breaking legal rulings. The RIAA also went after countless individuals, chasing down infringement wherever they could track it down.

It didn't work. The infringement just moved elsewhere, in unpredictable ways. Nothing seems to drive innovation among copyright pirates as much as a defeat in the courts. That innovation didn't truly abate until Apple came along with its iPod/iTunes model, making music easily and legally available at a reasonable price. By then, the music industry was devastated.

All that couldn't happen to the book publishing industry? Sure could. The technologies are out there.

The stakes are even higher for authors than they've been for musicians. The ace in the hole for musicians is that they're not as dependent on copyright as book authors are. Music is a performing art: people buy tickets to see musicians. Writing is decidedly not a performing art. Nearly all authors give away their performances, through book tours and readings, and are glad for any audience they can find. For most authors, markets created by copyright are all we've got.

Protecting authors' interests has always been our top priority: in this case a timely harnessing of Google was the best way to do it.

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When Book Pirates Go Too Far

Google is very cool in my opinion. I hope they'll be cool with the fact that I'm sharing this information, which I found after clicking a few links on their site until I came to a textlink titled webpage removal request tool.

Here's the url:
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/topic.py?topic=13926&hl=en

Why was I looking?

Because I am a GOOGLE shareholder (in a very small way) and I could not believe that GOOGLE didn't have a mechanism for upholding the law, in this case, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act... and of course, they do.

There's a blog that has been outraging some of my friends. Frankly, it outrages me, too, even though my e-books have not been allegedly bought, duplicated in violation of copyright, uploaded to "file-sharing" sites, and illegally disseminated:

My copyright has not been infringed.

This self described book worm had a comments section, but when authors and their friends posted comments informing the site and its visitors that posting links for ebooks to rapidshare and other such sites (surely never intended for this purpose) might be illegal, the bookworm allegedly removed the comments, and allegedly blocked the IPs of the authors.

The book worm also requested donations so he or she could purchase and then publish more ebooks. Paypal, a division of EBay, much to its credit, removed that convenience, so now, various credit card companies' logos are posted.

Would you give someone you knew or suspected to be thief your credit card info? Incredible! Would you knowingly finance alleged criminal activity? Moreover, the authorities would have all your contact information through your credit card company!

Here's what to do if a blogspot or otherwise Google owned or controlled site appears to be infringing on your copyrights.

Quoted as fair use from the Google site http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/topic.py?topic=13926&hl=en

Remove information from Google: Report copyright infringement

It's Google's policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office website) and other applicable intellectual property laws, which may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity.

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail -- not by email, except by prior agreement) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights. Indeed, in a previous case, a company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to pay over $100,000. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.

To expedite our ability to process your request, please use the following format (including section numbers):

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. For example, "The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on http://www.legal.com/legal_page.html."
2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above. Click the type of search you used to find the material to learn what information you should provide in your request:

Google Web Search

FOR WEB SEARCH, YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH SEARCH RESULT THAT DIRECTLY LINKS TO A WEBPAGE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS INFRINGING MATERIAL. This requires you to provide (a) the search query that you used, and (b) the URL for each allegedly infringing search result. Note that the URL for each search result appears in green on the last line of the description for that search result.

For example, suppose (hypothetically) that you conducted a search on Google.com using the query [Google], and found that the third and fourth results directly link to a webpage that you believe infringes upon the copyrighted text that you identified in item #1 above. In this case, you would provide the following information:

Search query: Google
Infringing webpages: http://directory.google.com/

Google Images

FOR IMAGES, YOU MUST PROVIDE THE EXACT URL FOR EACH IMAGE YOU WISH TO HAVE REMOVED FROM OUR IMAGES SERVICE.

For example:

http://www.mydomain.com/myimages/example_image.gif
http://www.illegal.com/illegal_stuff/illegal.gif

To find the exact URL of the image, please follow these steps:
1. Click the image that you locate in the image search results.
2. Click the thumbnail of the image shown in the top frame of the page that appears.
3. Click the URL that displays in your browser's address bar.
4. Right-click and select Copy.
5. In your notice to us, right-click and select Paste to add the URL to your document.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Google to contact you (email address is preferred).
4. Provide information, if possible, sufficient to permit Google to notify the owner/administrator of the webpage that allegedly contains infringing material (email address is preferred).
5. Include the following statement: "I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing webpages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law."
6. Include the following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury consistent with United States Code Title 17, Section 512, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."
7. Sign the paper.
8. Send the written communication to the following address:

Google Inc.
Attn: Google Legal Support, DMCA Complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Or fax to:

(650) 963-3255, Attn: Google Legal Support, DMCA Complaints

Please note that a copy of each legal notice we receive is sent to a third-party partner for publication and annotation. As such, your letter will be forwarded to Chilling Effects (http://www.chillingeffects.org) for publication. You can see an example of such a publication at http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=861. A link to your published letter will be displayed in Google's search results in place of the removed content.

For more information, please see http://www.google.com/dmca.html

Be warned, my next post may be about hernia surgery!

All the best,
Rowena Cherry

Google and you shall find. Archimedes, beware!

Recently I've been mystified to receive emails from readers (other authors' readers, I think) containing phrases like,

"You write erotica..." or "As an author of erotica..."

To the best of my understanding of that genre I do not write erotica. Here's why.
My heroines do not make love to more than one hero per book, nor does the hero make love with anyone other than the heroine once they have met. Every book ends happily, which means that the hero and heroine decide to get married and live monogamously.

So, my correspondents' assumptions presented a challenge.

Today (because my horoscope is negatively aspected for more serious endeavours) I decided to Google (or google) "Rowena Cherry" and "erotica".

Eureka! But not in a good way.

My Search produced several obliging quotations, most containing ellipses (those three or four dots that are a heads-up that words have been omitted.) However, the casual searcher could definitely receive the wrong impression.

Since I was familiar with the review most quoted, I did a second search:

"Rowena Cherry" and "not erotica"

Eureka, again! The very same reviewers' quotes came up, but instead of the ellipses was the word NOT.

It would seem that Google obliges the searcher by giving them what they are looking for! No more. No less. How dangerous!

Nevertheless, Google is still my favorite stock pick, and my favorite Search Engine. I shall just have to remember to be scrupulous about clicking the links on even the most obvious-seeming quotes that appear to prove whatever I am seeking to prove, before I leap out of the proverbial bathtub, crying Eureka, and thinking that I've found proof of whatever I was searching for.

Best wishes,

Rowena