Google’s copyright hypocrisy

Paula Browning, CEO of Copyright Licensing NZ and chair of the Copyright Council, has a go in Idealog at Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon about how their business practices devalue the work of the people who create the work that they make their money from. It’s a great piece – smart, clear, funny and focused – and it takes no prisoners, right from the first two paragraphs:

The most ironic thing I’ve heard recently is this: Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, has written a book. Is it being made available for free amongst the millions of books in the Google Book Scan project? Nope. It’s being published by Random House, in both print and digital formats, for US$26.95 and US$15.20 respectively. Amazon has discounted the print copy to US$16.

Welcome to the creative world, Mr Schmidt, where the technology company has decided just how much – or rather, how little – your creativity is worth!

Read on.