Google Print Kills Children?
from the Great-Ormon-Street-hospital?-this-is-reality-calling... dept
The debate over Google’s book scanning plan seems to get more ridiculous with each passing day. It seems like a lot of people on both sides of the argument haven’t bothered to spend any time looking at the actual details of what Google is doing. However, leading the pack for ridiculousness is the claim from the Great Ormon Street Hospital that Google’s Print project will undermine their efforts to save “seriously ill children.” The hospital owns the rights to Peter Pan, and uses the money from royalties to fund research. This isn’t the first time the hospital has gone nuts over the copyright, by the way. A few years ago they went after a woman who dared to write a derivative book based on the Peter Pan story. Just imagine what they would do if they were allowed to have a patent on the story? As for the Google Print situation, never mind the fact that you won’t be able to read Peter Pan via Google Print and never mind the fact that it’s designed to help more people find the book — the hospital seems to think it needs to get paid any time anyone mentions Peter Pan, and they’re not afraid to make you feel guilty for thinking otherwise. It’s a classic “just think of the children” gambit. Have they started suing libraries for having Peter Pan in their card catalogs? Of course, if Google Print is going to destroy all those children’s lives without actually letting anyone read the story, how come Project Gutenberg’s version of Peter Pan hasn’t driven the hospital out of business already? And, in the meantime, did anyone bother to let the hospital know that they can simply ask Google not to scan Peter Pan and all their “problems” would be solved?
Comments on “Google Print Kills Children?”
UMVU estimator
Midterm tomorrow morning, and I’m learning about how nothing is as it seems. Suppose X is an experimentally obtained random number between 0 and Z; we do not know what Z is. Suppose we repeat the experiment N times, so that we have values X(1), X(2), X(3), … X(N). How do we solve for the value of Z?
Common sense might tell us to take the average of the X’s and multiply it by 2.
However, a more accurate estimate is to take the maximum value of X’s, max(X), and multiply it by (N+1)/N. It can be mathematically proven that this is better.
But wow, a hospital owning rights to Peter Pan? That sounds like a statistic out of UMVU land.
I bet these are the fuckers responsible..
for a new Peter Pan movie coming out every 2 years. Movie Studios are probably the biggest customers of the IP hoarding industry. Wanna make a movie about Cleopatra? Undoubtably someone holds the rights. Wanna make a movie about Robin Hood? You can be sure someone holds the rights. Probably the only thing you can make a movie about without paying an IP fee is World War II. Which explains why there’s so god damn many of them.
Re: Google
Screw the hospital,keep helping the children and let Google scan some more books god dam it.
No Subject Given
Hospital gone nuts over Peter Pan?
WOW!!! That’s a genius new advertising/flavour!
Peter Pan Peanut Butter
Google should donate some Jelly and Bread to that hospital – at least the children would not go hungry [sarcasm]
Nothing to see here. Move along...
“A spokesman for Great Ormond Street said he hadn’t had a chance to view the site yet but hoped Google would think twice before publishing the book.” – ZDNet
In other words: some fuckwit claiming to represent the hospital answered a reporter’s question when he clearly didn’t have a clue what was going on.
3 biggest lies
It’s for the children.
It’s because of national security.
It’s for your convenience.
How about a game? Any time someone says one of these to you, they get a head butt.
There are also two questions (automatically answered by a rowdy “Hell Yeah!”) that deserve even more special consideration for the person who speaks them:
Are you calling me a liar?
Don’t you trust me?
Anyone who utters either of those two gems has to live in a trailer park without a job (” ‘Cause I hurt my back stocking shelves at the grocery store ten years ago”), and share the abode with an 18 year old named Tammy Sue who has three children by three different fathers. Oops, most of the people who say those magic phrases are already in that situation.
Marty