 |
 |
Both the law and the real world situation is unclear. Clearly, publishers own the intellectual property of a cover graphic. Could using thumbnail images of lots of covers in aggregate be considered fair use? Maybe, the law is not clear (there is some case law to suggest it could be, but it's hardly settled). Would publishers mind if you are using their intellectual property like this? It's not clear. On the one hand, these days everyone thinks they should be getting paid if you are using their IP for anything. On the other hand, _some_ publishers are giving thumbnails for free to Internet Archive. Maybe publishers realize giving you this 'property' to, after all, let you advertise their wares for them, is a good thing. Of course Bowker/Syndetics (and I think Ingram has a cover service too?) don't like free covers because they make money from it. I am very very curious as to what terms Bowker has with the publishers; does Bowker have an _exclusive_ license with the publishers to do certain things? How much, if any, do the publishers get paid for Bowker's use of their cover images? Very curious what the business situation is, because that helps us guess how various actors will behave. If you use Bowker/Syndetics images in a way not covered by the license, that's a license issue. Amazon licenses from Bowker, and in turn licenses the end-user, so there are various parties there that could be violating licenses. Google also licenses either from Bowker or Ingram or someone else, not sure who, but I'm pretty sure they've gotten cover images by license. The LibraryThing archive was not obtained by license. It was obtained by individual users scanning and uploading. So the only license involved is one between LibraryThing and the end-users of the images, there is no license violation with any provider of the image possible. Just possibly a copyright violation. Jonathan Lars Aronsson wrote: > Tim Spalding wrote: > > >> I really hope this—or more probably what comes of this—ends the >> selling of covers to libraries. >> > > Probably not, with all the restrictions you attached. > > Still, this is a most interesting experiment. Commercial sellers > supposedly have a legal backing from contracts with publishers, > which you don't? How long will that last? If it does last, it is > indeed a big win. > > In the blog entry, you wrote: "Publishers and authors want > libraries and bookstores to show their covers." -- I'm not so > sure. I think publishers want copyright to make it hard to use > out-of-print books, so people buy new books instead. Back in > 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote: "We don't want people to be attracted > by old things. We want them to like the new ones." > > > -- Jonathan Rochkind Digital Services Software Engineer The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu