Author Meghann Marco has written a letter to her publisher asking them why they are not only refusing to allow her book to be included in Google Print but are also suing Google to prevent any other Simon & Schuster titles from winding up there. For the uninitiated there’s an explanation of Google Print straight from the horse’s mouth here.
In addition to her letter to her publisher, she’s written Jason and he’s posted some of her (insightful) comments there.
In short (and I’m not the first or last to feel this way) we need to get content publishers to stop fucking suing people. If an artist or author or musician really perceives some threat from the consuming public let them hire a lawyer and do it themselves; this game of pretending to care makes the book publishers and record labels look even greedier than they actually are, and that’s saying something. It’s perfectly obvious that when the vast majority of your clients beg you to stop suing their audience and you refuse it’s more about money and vindication than protecting their rights.
Based on my terribly small knowledge of these sorts of things (probably due to a lack of reading) this case looks pretty inactionable. Google isn’t stealing anything, and certainly poses no greater threat to publishing as we know it than Amazon did when they decided to provide scans of the first few pages of all new titles. This is just another example of how tightening your grip assures that you’ll lose your hold altogether. It’s very difficult for me to work my head around the notion of paying $26 for a book or $14 for a CD as it is, much less without the added demerit of constant lawsuits emanating from the distributors of such products.