One of the things I enjoy about blogging is the comments. I realize some bloggers don’t accept comments or only allow them if you register or they affix rel=’nofollow’ on them so they would be devalued in the search engines, but sometimes there is gold in them thar hills.

I’ve written before and it bears repeating that sometimes the value of the comments outweighs what is written in the post itself. This gives other people — readers like you — across the globe the freedom and ability to agree, expand and/or challenge what’s been written and make the writer go hmm. This exchange is not possible in a traditional book-to-reader relationship. Yes, readers writing letters and then authors responding to letters, but that exchange is not usually transparent.

Sure, comments bring a host of other types of people too like spammers, trolls and bots to deal with but it’s kind of like that intern sifting through the slush pile at the publishing house, looking for that one great manuscript to take to the editors. Once in awhile, perhaps a couple times a month, somebody shows up in the comments area and writes something that really makes me reassess just what the hell I’m actually doing here.

Today that person is Paul Benjamin.

The subject is the ongoing Google Print controversy . This happened to be the only thing I wrote about yesterday on MLKJ day. Paul is leaning toward Google Print in letting them index all the books and I’m leaning the opposite way: toward the authors/publishers.

What I found particularly interesting about Paul’s commentary (he left two comments yesterday on this subject) was that he points out that if a work is out of print than it was a failure in the marketplace and by Google Print coming to the rescue — I’m paraphrasing heavily here — that this would give an opportunity for somebody else to reach and profit from that work.

And to that point, Paul writes: “I guess I am a greater believer in the free market than you.”

I seriously doubt this is true, Paul, but it’s an interesting road to go down. You also wrote wondering if I maintain a copy of every website I’ve ever built? The answer is I do have a backup of every important non-beta release property I’ve ever created — or taken a key role in creating — on the web. Some I’ve chosen to monetize, most I’ve chosen to share freely on the web.

I also have some two million plus words, mostly in double-spaced 8 1/2 x 11 typed pages — never published — in a box that I treasure. You bet I find value in these unpublished works. Would I be upset — yes, I would — if Google found a way somehow to monetize these works without my permission just because I haven’t been able to (or in most cases haven’t yet decided to do so). And absolutely it would be without my permission if Google came to my office, ripped my print copies, scanned them, and then made this information searchable to the rest of the world.

Please stay with me, I do realize we are talking about published works, not unpublished works.

You see when a book goes out of print the copyrights, unless otherwise negotiated away, it will eventually end up reverting back to the creator of the work. This isn’t altogether different than what is happening with work that has never been published. The copyright travels back to the person who wrote it — or to their heirs and eventually after a certain amount of time it might end up in the public domain — which is the place where Google would be in the strongest position indexing. If that creator and/or his/her heirs want to cremate that copyrighted work with their ashes, use it for kindling in the fire or whatever it is 100% their perogative. It is their decision. Not yours, not mine, not Google’s.

Paul adds to the end of his comment which made the title of this post, that he’s: “… certainly a greater believer in the good of sharing ideas.”

Forgive me, Paul, but I don’t know who you are. Why not use Google on my name sometime and then come back and make that same statement. I have been sharing on the web — the vast majority of which I’ve done completely free to the masses across many, many websites for some 10 years now. How can you write that you are a greater believer in the the good of sharing ideas when you don’t even sign your name to a website so that others can see if you’ve actually backed that up?

I’m out here publishing my ideas, many of which don’t cost you or any other netizen a penny to read. Especially if you visit the public library in Kansas and use the internet connection provided by taxpayers like me.

This blog alone has had over 733,265 words in 2,832 posts, all of which have been free to read. I’ve given away free code, prizes, written how-tos, reviews, and the list goes on and on. Written almost every day, sharing the full text freely so that readers don’t even have to visit this website to get to the primary content if they don’t want to since July 4, 2003 which intentionally was started on that day — Independence Day. Freely and openly sharing full text with Google and every other major and minor search engine that doesn’t abuse the resources (some bots do and they are blocked). We have to pick and choose which activity to allow and deny so that the greatest number of people can freely access this website. Some bots don’t give a damn about how much resources they consume and damage the experience for others. Some are parasitic not symbiotic, unfortunately.

So please don’t roll out that you are a greater believer in sharing ideas unless you are prepared to back that statement up factually. It’s easy to check on me or any other published author using Google or any other search engine. I love to share and don’t just talk about it, I’ve been and continue to be out here actually doing it. Every day. I’m not saying that you don’t — or others who believe Google Print is in the right on their desire to copy books without the copyright holder’s permission — but it seriously weakens your statement if you won’t even share who you are or what you are doing when you sign the comments. I didn’t bother Googling “Paul Benjamin”, but if myself or others did, would we find evidence of a longer, greater history of your free sharing on the web?

Now, with all that understood and quite verifiable, when and if I have decided to do something commercial, publish something that I would like to get paid for, of which I’ve also done over the years on numerous occasions, I do not expect Google to feel free to come in and rip that work and say: Hey, but you can just use robots.txt if you don’t want us to do that because we want to free this information for the greater world. Sure, it’s easy to do on my websites and use robots.txt, I’ve already done that for certain parts of this website and Google respects that (thank you, Google). Unfortunately, this only stops bots that actually follow robots.txt and what’s to stop a bot that doesn’t respect robots.txt from gobbling up that “marked for commercial, do not scan” material in public, non-protected webspace and then republishing so that Google gobbles it elsewhere?

If you said nothing besides a DMCA complaint, bingo.

See, it is a much bigger can of worms when we mix websites into this discussion along with print books. We’re not talking about websites here, we’re talking about print books. I don’t have any problem with search engines, in fact, I like them a lot, particularly Google who sends a great deal of traffic, which provides tangible value in return. That is a mutually beneficial relationship. Some of those folks will buy from advertisers here and that’s what helped start and keep this blog free. You see, if I don’t make money from any of my projects online, then I can’t keep doing other ones that are free. I’ll have to start charging for all of them or quit publishing altogether. The content would get more restrictive, not less. That doesn’t lead to freedom, that leads to quite the opposite, and that is one of my major concerns about Google Print.

It is possible with Google Print that the creators of books no longer in print will profit from this project. That is the strongest part of the Google Print argument, but in order to do that, Google is making assumptions many folks, myself included, are not certain that they should be making.

Now let’s talk about the meaning of ‘free’ on the web.

Yes, despite it being ‘free’ on the surface, this is actually a commercial blog, even though the words are freely available. There are costs to me associated with running this blog of which I’ve chosen to offset and profit by using ads. There are the server resources, the hosting fees and perhaps the thing above all I value most: my time. It takes me time to write these posts and time for people to read them — none of which either of us can ever get back (at least yet, anyway). Quoted text aside, these posts aren’t hijacked from somebody else’s mind, or scanned artificially by a machine, they are generated from my brain, hand picked, published and shared.

Is it possible, Paul, what you really meant to write is that you are a greater believer in the good of stealing ideas than I? Because last time I checked, if somebody comes into my home, or into my bank account and liberates my property without my permission, that’s exactly what they are doing.

Despite how it might read, I haven’t completely made up my mind on this whole Google Print situation but if Google is trying to use the same arguments Paul is then absolutely, positively yes I will be on the side of authors/publishers. As written yesterday, I’m leaning to the authors/publishers because that’s what I happen to be: author and publisher, but I still hold the door open a crack for opposite opinions to sway me. Thank you for trying, Paul.

And lastly, who are you or me or Google to suggest what the value of someone’s work is because the market chose not to accept it? I would ardently suggest that the creator of the work finds the most value in their creations and no algorithm will ever be able to reach inside the mind of an author and accurately determine what they wished be done with their work.

Google has made billions creating highways and sideroads to content. I can see why they want to open up another road to print books — many of which have gone out of print and/or are difficult to find — but while rolling all that hot asphalt is it really too much expecting them to do what our mother’s have always taught us?

Ask permission first.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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