Rep. John Conyers, Chairman, House Judiciary Committee“The settlement has, in my view, has been fair to copyright holders.” (
Wall Street Journal) "A library available to every household with an Internet connection -- this could be the greatest innovation in book publishing since the Gutenberg press." (
CNET) "Google is in this position not because they have engaged in anticompetitive behavior, but because they have built a better mousetrap in the eyes of mousetrap purchasers." (our notes)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren"What I look at in this settlement is really the private sector achieving what we failed to achieve [with orphan works legislation]... I own a Kindle and I use it all the time, but one of the things that we're going to see here is for the first time some competition for Amazon because if we have an open source effort and a clearance of rights, you're going to have for the first time some heavy-duty competition." (our notes)
Rep. Brad Sherman"I think the only thing that's irresponsible is to tell the people of the world they're not going to have access to all the knowledge in all the books for which authors cannot be found. That's what's irresponsible. Now when Congress doesn't act, maybe that's irresponsible. If you try to prevent others from acting, that may be irresponsible. If you choose not to act yourself, that's irresponsible. The overriding message here is this knowledge needs to be made available and I hope that we do that as quickly as possible. (our notes)
Rep. Lamar Smith"[The settlement is a] novel and innovative way for people to acquire knowledge" (our notes)
Rep. Mel Watt"The best protection of the prerogatives of the legislative branch is for us to legislate. Since we have haven't done very effectively the legislation on the orphaned works, it's hard for me to condemn the courts to have a case before it that determines what can be done and can't be done with orphaned works." (
CNET)
I think the digitizing of books is an ingenious idea, and I truly wish it would eventually be extended to all books (particularly the extremely extensive, mystical, all-powerful college textbook). There were countless times while in college that when I needed a book, it was either already checked out, in some other university system that would take a week to deliver, in a special reserves room, or simply not available (hard to believe, isn't it?). Why make learning so difficult?
ReplyDeleteSome may argue that it's just being lazy on the college student's part, but my counterargument is that it's simply the way students are being taught nowadays; we grew up on computers and the internet.
It's a no-brainer to finally start entering the 21st century and allow books to be available online, like everything else has been for years (newspapers, music, movies, magazines..). I understand the legal battles need to be fought to ensure proper distribution and compensation, but knowledge available to everybody online is something that should not be undermined.