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Tuesday, June 02, 2020
MediaWeek Report (Vol 13, No 8): Summer Newsletter 2020 - News Clips and More
Monday, June 01, 2020
MediaWeek Report (Vol 13, No 7): Publishers sue Internet Archive over Book Scanning (Plus Filing)
Plaintiffs Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House are suing the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement over the "National Emergency Library" which IA launched to great fan fare earlier this year. The suit alleges that IA has "brazenly reproduced some 1.3 million bootleg scans of print
books, including recent works, commercial fiction and non-fiction,
thrillers, and children’s books." without permission or financial consideration.
From the press release:
While the Author Guild isn't a party to this filling (yet?) the have also released an open letter condemning the IA and its actions.
Selected snips from the filing:
3. Despite the “Open Library” moniker, IA’s actions grossly exceed legitimate library services, do violence to the Copyright Act, and constitute willful digital piracy on an industrial scale. Consistent with the deplorable nature of piracy, IA’s infringement is intentional and systematic: it produces mirror-image copies of millions of unaltered in-copyright works for which it has no rights and distributes them in their entirety for reading purposes to the public for free, including voluminous numbers of books that are currently commercially available.
6. "For the avoidance of doubt, this lawsuit is not about the occasional transmission of a title under appropriately limited circumstances, nor about anything permissioned or in the public domain. On the contrary, it is about IA’s purposeful collection of truckloads of in-copyright books to scan, reproduce, and then distribute digital bootleg versions online.
IA often suggests that the Website is limited to twentieth-century books, but this is neither accurate nor a defense. IA scans, uploads, and distributes huge numbers of in-copyright books published in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including many books published within just the past few years.
7. Moreover, while Defendant promotes its non-profit status, it is in fact a highly commercial enterprise with millions of dollars of annual revenues, including financial schemes that provide funding for IA’s infringing activities. By branding itself with the name “Open Library,” it thus badly misleads the public and boldly misappropriates the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.
8. IA defends its willful mass infringement by asserting an invented theory called “Controlled Digital Lending” (“CDL”)—the rules of which have been concocted from whole cloth and continue to get worse....
...no provision under copyright law offers a colorable defense to the systematic copying and distribution of digital book files simply because the actor collects corresponding physical copies.
9. In short, Defendant merely exploits the investments that publishers have made in their books, and it does so through a business model that is designed to free-ride on the work of others.
11. No concept of fair use supports the systematic mass copying or distribution of entire books for the purpose of mass reading, or put another way, for the purpose of providing to readers the very thing that publishers and authors provide in the first place through lawful and established channels. IA does not add something new to the Plaintiffs’ books, with a different purpose or character; thus, it cannot even begin to make the all-important showing that its use of the works is transformative. Separately, Section 109 of the Copyright Act is clear that, pursuant to the doctrine of first sale, the owner of a lawfully acquired print book may dispose only of her/his particular print copy. One who makes and distributes reproductions of that physical copy—such as IA’s low quality scans—is well outside the bounds of the law.
13. Its goal of creating digital copies of books and providing them to whomever wants to download them reflects a profound misunderstanding of the costs of creating books, a profound lack of respect for the many contributors involved in the publication process, and a profound disregard of the boundaries and balance of core copyright principles. IA does not seek to “free knowledge”; it seeks to destroy the carefully calibrated ecosystem that makes books possible in the first place—and to undermine the copyright law that stands in its way
From the press release:
Despite the self-serving library branding of its operations, IA’s conduct bears little resemblance to the trusted role that thousands of American libraries play within their communities and as participants in the lawful copyright marketplace. IA scans books from cover to cover, posts complete digital files to its website, and solicits users to access them for free by signing up for Internet Archive Accounts. The sheer scale of IA’s infringement described in the complaint—and its stated objective to enlarge its illegal trove with abandon—appear to make it one of the largest known book pirate sites in the world. IA publicly reports millions of dollars in revenue each year, including financial schemes that support its infringement design.
In willfully ignoring the Copyright Act, IA conflates the separate markets and business models made possible by the statute’s incentives and protections, robbing authors and publishers of their ability to control the manner and timing of communicating their works to the public. IA not only conflates print books and eBooks, it ignores the well-established channels in which publishers do business with bookstores, e-commerce platforms, and libraries, including for print and eBook lending. As detailed in the complaint, IA makes no investment in creating the literary works it distributes and appears to give no thought to the impact of its efforts on the quality and vitality of the authorship that fuels the marketplace of ideas.
....
“Regrettably, it seems clear that Internet Archive intends to bludgeon the legal framework that governs copyright investments and transactions in the modern world. As the complaint outlines, by illegally copying and distributing online a stunning number of literary works each day, IA displays an abandon shared only by the world’s most egregious pirate sites.”Add: Here is the filing via InfoDocket.
While the Author Guild isn't a party to this filling (yet?) the have also released an open letter condemning the IA and its actions.
The National Emergency Library is piracy, pure and simple, no matter how the Internet Archive and its founder Brewster Kahle cloak it as a social benefit. Making hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books available for download is theft. It is illegal and it needs to be shut down.For those interested, here is the summary of the legal resolution to the Google scanning case (via wikipedia):
Authors Guild v. Google is a copyright case litigated in the United States. It centers on the allegations by the Authors Guild, and previously by the Association of American Publishers, that Google infringed their copyrights in developing its Google Book Search database. In late 2013, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin (sitting by designation) dismissed the lawsuit, and affirmed that the Google Books program meets all legal requirements for "fair use," [1] in what Publishers Weekly called a "ringing endorsement" of Google.[2] The Authors Guild appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit, in New York, which held oral arguments in late 2014. On October 16, 2015, the Second Circuit "rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers, and found that the project provides a public service without violating intellectual property law."[3] The Authors Guild petitioned the US Supreme Court,[4] which in April 2016 declined to review the case, leaving the lower court's decision standing.[5]Today's case is different but may hinge on some of the same arguments and include 'first sale doctrine' arguments.
Selected snips from the filing:
3. Despite the “Open Library” moniker, IA’s actions grossly exceed legitimate library services, do violence to the Copyright Act, and constitute willful digital piracy on an industrial scale. Consistent with the deplorable nature of piracy, IA’s infringement is intentional and systematic: it produces mirror-image copies of millions of unaltered in-copyright works for which it has no rights and distributes them in their entirety for reading purposes to the public for free, including voluminous numbers of books that are currently commercially available.
6. "For the avoidance of doubt, this lawsuit is not about the occasional transmission of a title under appropriately limited circumstances, nor about anything permissioned or in the public domain. On the contrary, it is about IA’s purposeful collection of truckloads of in-copyright books to scan, reproduce, and then distribute digital bootleg versions online.
IA often suggests that the Website is limited to twentieth-century books, but this is neither accurate nor a defense. IA scans, uploads, and distributes huge numbers of in-copyright books published in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including many books published within just the past few years.
7. Moreover, while Defendant promotes its non-profit status, it is in fact a highly commercial enterprise with millions of dollars of annual revenues, including financial schemes that provide funding for IA’s infringing activities. By branding itself with the name “Open Library,” it thus badly misleads the public and boldly misappropriates the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.
8. IA defends its willful mass infringement by asserting an invented theory called “Controlled Digital Lending” (“CDL”)—the rules of which have been concocted from whole cloth and continue to get worse....
...no provision under copyright law offers a colorable defense to the systematic copying and distribution of digital book files simply because the actor collects corresponding physical copies.
9. In short, Defendant merely exploits the investments that publishers have made in their books, and it does so through a business model that is designed to free-ride on the work of others.
11. No concept of fair use supports the systematic mass copying or distribution of entire books for the purpose of mass reading, or put another way, for the purpose of providing to readers the very thing that publishers and authors provide in the first place through lawful and established channels. IA does not add something new to the Plaintiffs’ books, with a different purpose or character; thus, it cannot even begin to make the all-important showing that its use of the works is transformative. Separately, Section 109 of the Copyright Act is clear that, pursuant to the doctrine of first sale, the owner of a lawfully acquired print book may dispose only of her/his particular print copy. One who makes and distributes reproductions of that physical copy—such as IA’s low quality scans—is well outside the bounds of the law.
13. Its goal of creating digital copies of books and providing them to whomever wants to download them reflects a profound misunderstanding of the costs of creating books, a profound lack of respect for the many contributors involved in the publication process, and a profound disregard of the boundaries and balance of core copyright principles. IA does not seek to “free knowledge”; it seeks to destroy the carefully calibrated ecosystem that makes books possible in the first place—and to undermine the copyright law that stands in its way
Monday, May 18, 2020
Transcribing History - The Amateur Historian
Libraries and museums are noting huge spikes in volunteers helping to transcribe documents in special collections. Did you even know there there 'transcriber accounts' at the library of congress:
Washington Post“I think we all expected there would be an influx with so many people staying at home,” said Victoria Van Hyning, who runs the transcription program at the Library of Congress.But the number of new sign-ups has been staggering, officials said, and is growing exponentially. Teachers scrambling for engaging distance learning projects sign up their students, who in addition to learning about cool historical figures have also discovered something called cursive writing.In Washington, the Library of Congress reports a fivefold jump in new transcriber accounts since mid-March. The Smithsonian has seen new transcribers jump from 100 to 200 per month in pre-pandemic times to more than 5,000 per month now. Organizations are scrambling to upload new documents to meet the insatiable demand.
Friday, May 15, 2020
Textbook Class Action Case versus Publishers and Booksellers
A six person Chicago law firm which engages in class action and personal injury cases has taken on the education publishing industry over the relatively new "inclusive access" programs which provide day one access of educational materials for students.
According to FeganScott’s managing partner Beth Fegan, who is representing the students, the agreements require students to obtain their required course materials from an “Inclusive Access” program by paying full-price for a digital access code from their official on-campus bookstore. When the semester ends, students lose access to the textbook, eliminating the possibility to resell to secondary purchasers.
“Textbooks have always been a major expense for college students, but for most, the free market allowed them to purchase or resell used textbooks to blunt the cost,” Fegan said. “These agreements rob students of that option, forcing them to play by the rules set by publishers and bookstores.”Press release
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Bookstore Founder Sylvia Beach's Digital Archive
In Paris, during the 1920s and 30s, Sylvia Beach's bookstore was the center of English (and French) literary life. When she died, Princeton University collected all her personal items from her apartment above the store and added them to their special collections library. Princeton has just announced that some of this material (and presumably more to come) is now available digitally.
Visitors can search the website for a library member, such as Hemingway, to see which books he borrowed and the dates he withdrew them and returned them. Clicking “cards” reveals images of the handwritten notes kept by the store’s clerks who recorded his loans. Hemingway was a library member, on and off, from 1921 to 1938 and borrowed more than 90 books, including P.T. Barnum’s Barnum’s Own Story, which he kept for a few weeks in the fall of 1927, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which he kept for just eight days in September 1929. He borrowed Bull Fighting by Tom Jones in 1926. One also can view his purchases — he bought a copy of his novel A Farewell to Arms at the store — and the addresses where he lived in Paris.
Fans of an author can use the website to “read the books they read and see who else read those books,” said Joshua Kotin, an associate professor of English at Princeton and the project’s director. “We hope this will be a resource for scholars and nonscholars.”Hat tip Gary Price
Monday, May 04, 2020
MediaWeek Report (Vol 13, No 6): Cengage McGraw Hill Education Merger is Abandoned
Announced early Monday, Cengage CEO Michael Hansen has told staff that the proposed merger with McGraw Hill is being abandoned. As close watchers will know, this deal faced legal headwinds not just in the US but also in the UK, Europe and Australia. While that situation may be a mitigating factor - the deal close had been put off several times even before COVID-19 - it may well be that the impact of COVID-19 on the education market has raised so much market risk that the deal is no longer viable. Additionally, COVID-19 may well have significantly changed the enterprise value for each of the Cengage and McGraw Hill businesses units which was critical to the deal fundamentals.
[I actually wrote this post on Friday when there were some rumors going about. The PR blames the regulatory hurdles]
This deal was sold as a merger 'of equals' but perhaps that has changed to much to justify completing the deal. Is it possible with this deal dead, will one will try to take over the other? There is no question both companies are going to know the intimate details of each business and that might create a deal scenario. Perhaps believing a deal needs to be done, will they turn to another company in an effort to achieve the scale they need? Macmillan or Wiley could be a 'safe-harbor' to steam into given the circumstances. The interim (and I bet soon to be permanent) CEO of McGraw Hill is the ex-CEO of Macmillan Education. Time will tell.
Where this puts both companies will be interesting to watch. Hansen was set to become CEO of the combined company and McGraw's CEO has already left the business. This was Hansen's deal and whether not closing it will reflect poorly on his leadership is debatable given the tectonic changes in the market. That said, some in the industry reflected early on that the anti-competitive issues the combination faced were always going to cause problems and believed that the deal should not have been pursued in the first place. As we all know, the justice department seems to wane one way or the other depending on administration priorities and this deal didn't look like it had significant opposition in the US. That was not the case in the other markets however.
Joining An Expert Network: Market Intelligence Report
Take a look at my quick survey of some of the expert network and consulting platforms which you may want to join. See the link to the free report below.
Expert Joining In
So called ‘expert networks’ have grown substantially over the past fifteen years; so much so that the marketplace might be considered fractured. While there are some large, long-term players in the market including GLG (Gerson Lehman Group), which defined the segment in the early 2000s, there are now many more recent entrants.
With the rapid development of the gig economy there has also been a smudging of the distinction between ‘expert networks’ and ‘consulting marketplaces’. The ‘expert network’ typically addresses short, discrete business questions whilst the ‘consulting marketplace’ delivers longer-term, project-based engagements. Unless full-time work prevents it, there is no reason not to join the two types of organization.
Both support the matchmaking aspect of consulting by introducing specific expertise (from the consultant) to a particular business need (the project). When they first came on the scene, platforms providing expert network engagements tended to define them as brief, telephone-based interactions which were over and done with quickly.
If this is similar in concept to online matchmaking, perhaps I need to make my profile a little racier
That model is still relevant but, as more companies recognize the benefits of ‘on-demand’ experts, they are not always thinking in terms of one-hour increments any longer.
This is good news for consultants and business executives looking to leverage their skills, knowledge and expertise. I’ve participated in many “expert” engagements over the years and I’d like to have done more. So, to understand this market a little better, I undertook this research.
It is not a complete survey but for anyone (at least in my network) new to this industry, it will provide useful insight and links to some of the larger players.
Many of the expert companies – big and small – have obvious but self-serving objectives to unlock knowledge from around the world to help their clients’ businesses make better decisions. But individual experts can also benefit by extending their networks, building their reputations, and even conducting different types of work outside their specialty while still drawing on their skills and expertise.
In my own experience, several phone consults have resulted in short market research engagements. While many types of companies seek advice from experts, I have found they tend to be mainly investment banks and private equity firms seeking specific information to support investments under consideration.
There has also been a smudging of the distinction between ‘expert networks’ and ‘consulting marketplaces’
It can be difficult to understand the client’s context without a relationship and I’ve sometimes had difficulty understanding the relevance of a client’s line of questioning. That said, I have always enjoyed these sessions.
Most of the firms on the attached list are broadly international in scope, although some do concentrate on specific geographic areas (such as the Gulf states or SE Asia, for example). And many of the larger firms cover a broad range of industry segments, having a large inventory of varied experts to support that coverage.
While I have seen some fracturing in the market there is also a lot of overlap from experts joining multiple platforms. Signing on to additional networks was one of my objectives and I am sure many others have also followed the same strategy.
Occasionally, the expansion of membership on these expert platforms may not always be advantageous. While it may be ‘anecdata’, right after I joined GLG in the mid-2000s I had a regular stream of consultations but, over time, as GLG got bigger and bigger, my referrals waned. I have not done a GLG consult in more than three years.
If this business is similar in concept to online matchmaking, perhaps I need to make my profile a little racier.
Signing up
When a consult is undertaken, the timing is often very precise and the client will not ordinarily pay for any prep work. You should take that into account when you set your rate. Recently, one call I had was booked for 45 minutes (which is what I would have billed for); however, the call was logged on their network platform at 42 minutes and that’s how my bill was calculated.
The attached list includes ‘traditional’ expert network companies like GLG and also consulting firms like Catalant, which features longer-term engagements and projects which can take a few days to a few months.
If you are considering this type of work, and do not have a full-time job, then I encourage you to look into these networks and sign up.
The report is FREE for download via this link. (And please check out my web-site).
*******
Michael Cairns is a publishing and media executive with over
25 years experience in business strategy, operations and technology
implementation. He has served on several boards and advisory groups
including the Association of American Publishers, Book Industry Study Group and
the International ISBN organization. Additionally, he has public
and private company board experience. He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
MediaWeek (Vol 13, No 5): Pandemic Books, Hate Publishing on Amazon, College Returns?
I pulled together a quick list of pandemic books a few weeks ago and here is a CNN article about a rejected book (by publishers) which is now getting a lot of attention from the market
![Lockdown: the crime thriller that predicted a world in quarantine by [Peter May]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51MVQiVw+vL.jpg)
A pandemic thriller, once rejected by publishers for being unrealistic, is now getting a wide release (Amazon).
On Amazon and how they don't police hate publishing from their outlets:
A crazy political 'dirty tricks' effort in Australia where a high ranking advisor to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pirated the unpublished biography of the prior Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (Guardian)
Interesting effort by Digiday to offer services to publishers challenged by todays events.
Joint announcement by the ABA, AAP and Authors Guild urging readers to help save bookstores:
A pandemic thriller, once rejected by publishers for being unrealistic, is now getting a wide release (Amazon). The book, which was rejected by publishers at the time for being too unrealistic, was finally published on Thursday. The thriller is set in London, the epicenter of a global pandemic that forces officials to institute a lockdown. The story isn't entirely based on May's imagination. He used British and US pandemic preparedness documents from 2002 to make it was as realistic as possible. (CNN)
On Amazon and how they don't police hate publishing from their outlets:
Propublica: The Hate Store: Amazon’s Self-Publishing Arm Is a Haven for White Supremacists.
“Kindle will publish anything,” a third user chimed in. They were basically right. It takes just a couple of minutes to upload one’s work to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon’s self-publishing arm; the e-book then shows up in the world’s largest bookstore within half a day, typically with minimal oversight. Since its founding more than a decade ago, KDP has democratized the publishing industry and earned praise for giving authors shut out of traditional channels the chance to reach an audience that would have been previously unimaginable.
A crazy political 'dirty tricks' effort in Australia where a high ranking advisor to the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pirated the unpublished biography of the prior Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (Guardian)
Some of the biggest names in politics will be drawn into the controversy over pirating of Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography after his publisher reached a settlement on the issue. On Tuesday evening Hardie Grant reached a settlement with Scott Morrison’s adviser Nico Louw over claims he distributed unauthorised copies of Turnbull’s book, A Bigger Picture, before its formal release on Monday.Also from Australia a state of the market from The Guardian
“An undisclosed sum was settled for and he’s given us where he got [the digital copy] from and where it went to,” the chief executive of the publishing house, Sandy Grant, told Guardian Australia Wednesday.
Interesting effort by Digiday to offer services to publishers challenged by todays events.
“Sadly, after a decade of recovery and growth that affirmed the importance of reading, writing, and publishing, bookstores are suddenly facing a moment of monumental crisis at the hands of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the three women write. “In some instances, these beloved institutions, which mean so much to so many communities, face the very real possibility that they will never open their doors again.
“We cannot let this happen because we need bookstores now more than ever. As award-winning poet and writer Jen Campbell wrote in her book The Bookshop Book, ‘Bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.’”
PEN America sends a letter to demand an end to access fees for eBooks in Prisons:
Schools around the world are coming to the realization that things will never be the same:
From WAPO:
From SMH:
Flipboard Magazine
We, the undersigned, are a coalition of groups and individuals concerned with the rights and dignity of incarcerated people, as well as with their access to reading materials alongside other sources of information and recreation. We write to ask that you waive your fees for incarcerated people to access digital content on your tablets during this pandemic.
As we speak, millions of Americans are confined to their homes in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. Yet, they have a multitude of options to continue to engage with the outside world through educational and recreational access to information. In fact, several major companies that offer digital content–like Audible, JSTOR, and Cengage–have taken steps to make more of their content freely available during the pandemic, to help lessen the burden of isolation on readers.
Schools around the world are coming to the realization that things will never be the same:
From WAPO:
College students want answers about fall, but schools may not have them for months
From SMH:
Australia's school system will be forever changed and possibly improved by what we learn from the COVID-19 closures. Parents will develop a renewed appreciation for the critical role of teachers, and outdated educational practices will be questioned.
Worldwide, there will be a rethink of education when we come out the other side. We may discover through this process that there are other ways to better engage children and develop more attractive styles of learning in this technological age.
Do schools really need to operate from nine to three for 200 set days of the year? Do we still need to rely on the HSC as the major way of credentialing students for future pathways? I think this crisis will force us to think differently.
Flipboard Magazine
*******
Michael Cairns is a publishing and media executive with over
25 years experience in business strategy, operations and technology
implementation. He has served on several boards and advisory groups
including the Association of American Publishers, Book Industry Study Group and
the International ISBN organization. Additionally, he has public
and private company board experience. He can be reached at michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com
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