Mader Blog

Why is it that certain people react to success with anger, disdain and accusations of criminality?

[W]hen it comes to Google’s Print Library Project we have much in common: We’re both authors and both believe intellectual property should actually mean something. And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution. . . .
Google’s position essentially amounts to a license to steal, so long as it returns the loot upon a formal request by their victims. This is precisely why Google’s argument has no basis in U.S. intellectual property law or jurisprudence. Just because Google is huge, it should not be allowed to change the law.

Put aside, for the moment, that nagging question in the back of your mind – the question why the government should be able to take your property pending settlement while Google should not. Put aside the question of the propriety of two former Congressmen alleging criminal behavior on behalf of a private corporation – in the absence of any formal allegation, or indeed even any plan to levy such charges. Put aside, if you can, the more fundamental question of the propriety of granting to authors and other ‘creators’ a (temporary and limited) monopoly over the use of their creations.
When you put it all aside, the truth seems pretty clear: the position put forward by Barr and Schroeder has less to do with principle than with self-interest. Every major technological advance, I’d suggest, has resulted in the obsolescence of a certain industry; as a result, such advances have perennially been opposed by those whose economic interests were immediately threatened. The Luddites didn’t hate the loom as a technological device; they hated the loom because the loom was more efficient than they were – because the loom would take their jobs.
Is Google’s Print Library akin to the loom? I think it is. But the Luddites here aren’t authors – because Google Print doesn’t threaten the livelihood of individual authors; on the contrary, most authors don’t make millions of dollars on advances and book tours and sales. Google Print will expose an author’s works to an audience larger than any previously possible – and vice versa.
No, the Luddites here are those – like Schroeder – who operate an antiquated publishing industry that is about to be rendered obsolete by technological advances. We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in music over the past five or six years, with Napster shocking the music biz one way, the courts offering a counter-shock and iTunes (and other online stores) coming up the middle, revolutionizing the way music is marketed and purchased. The big names in the music industry continue to thrive, to the extent that they do, because of their willingness to adapt to the new reality, not because of their successes in opposing it.
Ultimately the print industry will experience the same readjustment – and an awful lot of people – like Schroeder – will feel it in the pocket. But just as Napster made the music industry once again responsive to the consumer, so will – or can – Google Print put the reader in control of the dissemination of information, rather than the industry executive. Contrary to the assertions of self-interested actors like Barr and Schroeder, that’s a good thing.
But just as iTunes needed a Napster, the ultimate reorientation of the print industry requires Google Print. It’s the shock to the system that will kick-start reform.
And, to judge by the histrionics of the Barr/Schroeder article, the system has successfully been shocked.