Re Publishing photographs:Last summer one of the local papers published a picture of 2 young lovers strolling through Bowring Park with their arms lovingly around each other.It so happened that one of these "lovers"was a "happily" married off duty police officer and his wife of course immediately launched divorce proceedings. He tried to sue the paper but didn't get anywhere with it as the paper for whatever reason didn't need his permission to publish the pic.I guess he figured if he won the lawsuit he'd be in better position to pay alimony.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Mike, the F5 hit worked for you?

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Didn't work for me either F5 or SHIFT+F5 on the one video I found that had a advert on it. I'll keep trying though.

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No no and no

OK: well this will probably bore everyone else rigid, but I guess they can tune out for minute.

My wife is up to her ears getting stuff done before the Christmas break and didn't have time to trawl too far for a good link for you - apologies. This issue has been rumbling on for so many years now it is hard to find something recent that summarizes the whole issue, rather than just reporting the latest development.

She did find this, which is very long and to my eye doesn't quite convey what the fuss is all about. But if you can be bothered:

http://io9.com/5501426/5-ways-the-googl ... of-reading

And if you can't be bothered with that (very reasonably) then I'll try to summarize the contentious part of it:

Early in the decade Google decided that they would digitize the contents of several large libraries so that there would be an online library of millions of books easily available for free or quite cheap to view. Sounds very charming and just the sort of thing the internet is about, right...?

However, whilst they intended to make available out-of-copyright books as well as academic research papers and such, in their non-selective digitization of whole libraries at a time they also scooped up millions of books that are still within copyright and not available for reproduction. They belong to people. They were sued for breach of copyright by the Association of American Publishers and in 2008 settled out of court. This settlement became the infamous Google Book Settlement.

It is all amazingly complicated, involving hideously intricate law about rights ownership, licensing across different territories, digitization rights in contracts written before digitization existed - and endless such things.

However, there are key points that cause rage in the publishing world. The Association of American Publishers caved in to the very rich and powerful Google, accepting a one-off payment of $75m for all time for the rights Google had abused. In so doing they "sold" rights which (it is argued) were not theirs to sell. Even American authors objected strongly to being sold out in this way; non-American authors (the majority) doubly so.

Google has then behaved as if this settlement applies to everyone everywhere. In fact, American publishing is a small minority of the world industry and even a substantial part of US publishing is in fact owned by the French, the British and the Germans. Just to get it into proportion, in the UK for example we publish 100,000 new titles every year. The equivalent figure for the US (a country with six times the population) is 75,000. So what might go for America does not apply in the bigger, wider world.

The rest of the world was therefore pretty pissed off to be treated this way and has been fighting this agreement through the US courts, as a first step. It arrived at their Supreme Court once and Google lost: a new version of the "agreement" has now been awaiting another Supreme Court judgement for most of this year.

Key part. If the Agreement goes through Google will continue to publish online books it doesn't own. It is then up to the author or their representative (people like my wife) to discover that copyright has been infringed and take action. That runs a coach and horses through the way copyright works: in any other context you seek the copyright holder's permission to reproduce their work and then negotiate terms. Google has decided to say nuts to that, publish the work and leave it to authors to seek redress after the event. Within which case Google has decided to pay them a flat and derisory $60, regardless of the financial harm done.

At that point authors have two choices. To press the "opt in" button and accept a grossly unfair licensing arrangement of Google's choosing, or choose the "opt out" button - within which case it is the tiny author and whatever lawyers they can afford against the might and billions of Google.

It is the biggest attempted land grab in the history of intellectual property rights. It makes the Chinese pirating designs and brands look like childish beginners.

And that's what people like my wife are busy fighting every inch of the way.

Tedious, huh?

Back to guitars...

Cheers - C

Thankyou reading through now.

Not writing anymore thoughts on that clown show, here.

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No no and no

Believe me, as a civilian visitor to publishing circles I have heard such a lot about this over the years - and I still scratch my head in confusion over most of it! It's pretty flippin' impenetrable stuff.

Still, if you ever again hear the words "Google Book Settlement" you'll think to yourself: "Huh, someone once mentioned something about that. What the feck was it...?"



Cheers - C

No wonder a good portion of the world hates the US.

I'm all for making a buck/pound/euro, but a person should be able to control who uses their creation (art, book, song) for profit...unfortunately, crap like this makes sure that copyrights aren't worth the binary code used to burn them onto a hard drive.

The more I read about how corporations (American and otherwise) do business, it makes me wonder when there's going to be a revolution...and then the revolution will be acquired and commercialized (the Gap's new "Revolutionary Chic" line of clothing) and homogenized and then business as usual.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Hi SA: though I want to be very clear, I don't hate America in the slightest. I like it very much, along with most Americans I've ever met. I'm a big friend to you people!

And after all, however tiresome this sort of stuff is, at least in the West we have legal processes to go through and at any rate the possibility of putting things right. It's a long, expensive and dreary road, that's all...

And now seriously: back to guitars!

Cheers - C

I'll 2nd that sentiment.

What I do dislike is business, or rather big business making assumptions about what I want and what the rest of the world wants. Just steaming forward regardless of the after effects of their poor decisions.
Nothing to do with nationality at all. Theres plenty of people from all over the world who's names have gone in my book. Come the revolution they'll be lined up against the wall and shot. (I jest, partly )

Watch a few Citizen Smith episodes to see the joke. Here's my favourite scene ever. Crass and childish humour from the naughty urban guerilla
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYIqzYkW9ZQ&feature=related

What is important is understanding that theres a difference between people and things. Business's and goverments are things. When you treat people as things, thats when the trouble starts.

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No no and no