Have you read/reviewed the Terms of the Google Settlement? Quite the piece of work. You're kind of 'damned if you do & damned if you don't'.

Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search engines are essentially American 'distributors' of global 'content'. And, 'American 'Law', it seems, is increasingly backing them up.

What hope does a professional 'author' stand against Google? I would say none.

Even so, Eric Zohn, an attorney in business affairs at William Morris Endeavor, one of the largest entertainment agencies, is advising clients in the literary department, to opt OUT of 'registering' their work with Google because OTHERWISE "Google is free to SELL YOUR BOOK unless you expressly tell them NOT to." The terms of the agreement call for authors and publishers TO SPLIT 63 percent of any revenue that Google generates. Meaning, Google takes 37%, - Nice. The publisher & author get 31.5%.

The settlement, of a lawsuit brought by publisher and authors who argued that Google was violating their copyright by scanning books in libraries [without consent or compensation], would give Google THE RIGHT not only to digitize library books, but also sell them either as PART OF DATABASES or INDIVIDUALLY.

[my emphasis in caps]

(Marginally Paraphrased from New York Times, August 7th, 2009, "William Morris Advises Clients to Say No to Google Settlement".)

So, from my p.o.v., for authors, it's either a rock or a hard place …

And, for the record, I opted IN.

Let me look at this discussion somewhat naively, as an average connoisseur of books, movies, and music since this author claims to be an expert on the matter. By the way, the correct spelling of the service in question is YouTube, not U-Tube.

Even though I strongly agree that content creators deserve protection of their earnings, some are quite more protected than others. I own a great library of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that I started amassing back in University. And, it saddens me every time when I see a great literary piece sold for drastically bargain prices, at times less than a price of a Starbucks coffee that I drink at Chapters while browsing the books. And unlike some of the younger generations (I am in my 30s), I still enjoy good-quality paper, well-illustrated cover, and as a collector, a privilege of owning a personal hardcover copy (if available). However, even though the ability to very easily photocopy a book has existed long before digital media, I do not recall seeing any threating warnings of any of the books telling me that "if I dare copy or share this work with others, the copyright police will come and arrest me". Interesting, eh?

At the same time, I own a large collection of DVD movies and music CDs, many of them box sets, where some movie collections (like television series) cost more than $100 CDN a piece - significantly more than those bargain books mentioned above. In spite of this outrageous cost - the cost of blank media and the related marketing material is insignificant, unlike the cost of high quality paper used for printing hardcover books - on every single disc of each and every collection, when the disc is inserted, I have to tolerate and watch the unskippable threat from the content distributor. The threat concerns me having virtually no rights in regard to this product, even though I paid a great amount to own it and add it to my collection. The warning threatens me with severe punishment including reporting me to federal police if I "dare" copy and share some the material that I allegedly "only licensed". I have no illusion that I own and I know that I have only licensed the books in my library, but I never feel sour and disgusted with the way I was treated by authors and publishers - I thoroughly enjoy the book-buying experience. On the contrary, I do feel quite sour after purchasing a movie or music disc (music discs now come with similar printed warnings) and being threatened with "repercussions" as a paying customer. I am also aware of movie and music industry despicable effort to legally threaten (and bankrupt) average people who dared to share movies and music via Internet for absolutely no profit. To speak frankly, I thought that protection schemes were outlawed decades ago but in the case of movie and music industries, we still tolerate this attitude. Why?

So simply seeing this as an average Canadian connoisseur of books, movies, and music, I feel that our authors and writers need more rights and privileges in this process to earn their living, and that we have given great and possibly too many liberties and protections to movie and music distributors. And, instead of protecting the authors from "the evil public", they should instead be protected from publishers (e.g., given more mandatory rights when it comes to redistribution of their work) and various copyright organizations that claim to "protect writers interests", where in reality those organizations protect only themselves and their existence.

You just "stole" his essay.

Secondly, I made it through two "U-Tubes" (It's YOUTube.) and him writing off YouTube as entirely "Joe eating pizza" (There's actually quite a bit of very novel, very entertaining creative content.) before I stopped reading. He announces himself a dinosaur who can't even be [edited by moderator] enough to check his sources.

We certainly appreciate your professional opinion on the matter at hand regarding IP, development, distribution, copyright and protection. However, from a point of view of artisan creation in a country such as Canada, there are a varietly of Security issues that have been created as a result of insufficient abilities to follow through with Laws and their enforcement. My personal situation involves SONY BMG ZOMBA, and the assumption, production, and distribution of my creation. My SOCAN registry predates the artist that suggests the authenticity of their supposed creation, I have letters of acknowledgement from Bruce Scavuzzo pointing fingers at Eric Levine and label ZOMBA, I have Gary Wade Leak head legal counsel for SONY admitting to having my song before a musicologist, and I have CIPO (Canadian Intellectual Property Organization) officer Andre Trembley informing me that I am responsible for policing my own Intellectual Properties". What therefore I ask is the need for organizations such as SOCAN, CIPO, WIPO? when there is no actual power of enforcement, or investigative ability even to follow up on allegations of IP infringement by either individuals or corporations at large. We can agree at least that growing marijuana, processing marijuana, and distributing marijuana is an illegal way of creting commerce, however against the law and enforcement of the law is where the problem exists, Canada is the largest grower and distributor of this illegal substance. Fraud of any sort is illegal, however bringing those who engage in this activity on Canadian soil to justice is more than a fifteen year process with a very small harvest or track record of actual time served to those who choose this way of commerce. Lastly, with regards to the Library of Commerce and the registry of IP in my opinion needs to be explored from a Canadian point of view. We have been accepting in Brantford ON. that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone since registry in 1864, however the Americans do not recognize AGB as the authentic inventor of the said IP and infact suggest that the ownership of this IP is Antonio Maruchi. How ironic this becomes in tax collecting and contributions to Heritage initiatives, answering questions in public school forums? If Canada is seen as an illequipped, predictable inc. body, I don't believe that spending more money on discovering what the future holds is pointing to a profitable and secure future for creators of IP. I further believe that there are many inventors and creative beings who have realized this travesty, and are simply sitting on the IP of the future, while waiting out the digital era storm.