[WikiEN-l] Chinese start caring about copyright

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Carcharoth
<carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Carcharoth
>> <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> What's the context here for Wikipedia?
>>
>> IMHO, the google books settlement, and all its twists and turns, has
>> big implications for us, particularly in increasing the quality of our
>> referencing.
>
> Yeah, but if someone could spell it out in detail, that would be good.
>
> Carcharoth

The Chinese thing is bad for us because copyright is becoming a
one-way street. What good is the GFDL/CC if we cannot enforce it but
proprietary-licensing-but-copyright-infringing parties can enforce
theirs? Heads we win, tails you lose...

As for Google Books's settlements: I don't know. I don't think I've
seen anyone cover the consequences for Wikipedia.

Obviously we benefit in the short-term from having in-copyright books
(as well as all the public domain books which we could've expected to
appear online sooner or later), since most Wikipedians will only use
what's in Google.

But what're the long-term costs? As I understand it, if the settlement
is allowed to go through, it means anyone wanting to similarly use
orphan works or in-copyright works in general will have to undergo a
similar notification process and set up similar payment structures, a
barrier which will keep out competitors. And many of the digitized
works will be part of a wave of new public domain works is coming up
in the next 2 or 3 decades, and since we can expect Google to be
around then, we might also expect to see Google lined up with Disney
et al in lobbying for a new Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Google's
lobbying prowess is not trivial.

But besides that, I can't really think of any downsides. The community
isn't planning on going into digitizing & distributing non-Free
copyrighted books, so it doesn't really matter to us. Project
Gutenberg likewise, and the Internet Archive is either covered by its
special legal loopholes or likely isn't too bothered by having to keep
private its archived books. (It already keeps private countless
webpages; on a personal note, it's very frustrating to know the IA has
backups of a webpage you want, but that years later someone bought the
domain and put up a narrow robots.txt so you can't get at it.)

-- 
gwern