Para continuar con el seguimiento al caso de Google Books (véase post anterior aquí) paso a reseñar varias novedades interesantes. Empecemos por orden cronológico. En comunicado de prensa del 4 de febrero, el Departamento de Justicia de EEUU (DOJ) manifestó que la segunda versión del acuerdo de transacción (settlement agreement) que terminaría anticipadamente el proceso iniciado en virtud de una acción de clase (The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.) representa un importante avance respecto de la primera propuesta, pero que todavía le falta (véase el comunicado del DOJ «Justice Department Submits Views on Amended Google Book Search Settlement» y véase breve reseña de Law360). Básicamente el DOJ aconsejó a la Corte de Distrito encargada de revisar el acuerdo (Southern District of New York) que a pesar del avance todavía tiene preocupaciones respecto de temas de competencia, derechos de autor y sobre la certificación de clase. Según lo manifestado por el DOJ la segunda propuesta de acuerdo adolece del mismo pecado que la versión inicial:

«…it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation.»

En cuanto a las preocupaciones sobre la indebida restricción a la libre competencia que produciría el acuerdo, el DOJ insiste en que este le permitiría a Google ventajas significativas – posiblemente anticompetitivas- al otorgarle una posición monopolística a Google al ser el único agente en el mercado digital con derechos para ofrecer y explotar diversas obras en diferentes formatos. No obstante lo anterior, el DOJ  manifiesta que es posible diseñar un acuerdo que genere beneficios sociales significativos. La audiencia pública para la revisión de la segunda versión del acuerdo está programada para mañana, 18 de febrero.

Por otra parte, a quienes estén interesados en profundizar en el caso recomiendo descargar las presentaciones de la conferencia organizada por el IEJE y que está disponible en el blog de N. Petit (aquí). Destaco la conclusión de N. Petit sobre el alcance de este caso:

«Like I said at the conference, the GBS is a textbook example of an issue that, under competition standards, may warrant regulatory intervention: (i) intricate pricing issues; (ii) enormous fixed costs and unmatchable incumbency advantages; (iii) universal service – and other policy-related – issues (availability to users inside and outside the US, privacy, risks of disruption of service, censorship, etc.). Too early to tell, but in the future, Google’s digital library may exhibit the features of a good old essential facility.»

Ahora, para tener una visión diferente del problema les recomiendo la crónica publicada en The New Republic titulada «For the love of culture. Google, copyright, and our future«, escrito por Lawrence Lessig (profesor de derecho en Harvard). La crónica comienza con la descripción de la iniciativa de una productora de cine (Grace Guggenheim) para compilar los documentales de su padre (Charles Guggenheim) que resultó en una odisea por una razón «no tan obvia» de tipo legal: despejar el camino sinuoso de los derechos autor. Mediante el ejemplo de la hija del documentalista el profesor Lessig expone la complejidades de los derechos de autor y luego reflexiona sobre el acuerdo de Google Books.

El «drama de los documentales» es el siguiente: cuando un director de un documental desea «citar» videos de terceros (por ejemplo incluir «clips» de un noticiero en su documental) debe pedir permiso al dueño de las imágenes para poder usarlas en el documental. La solicitud de dichos permisos dio lugar a la suscripción de acuerdos de licencia que en ocasiones limitaban el uso del material en el tiempo, en cuanto al uso o el lugar geográfico en el cual podía presentarse.

¡Podrán imaginarse que despejar el camino de los derechos de autor puede ser bastante costoso aún para la hija misma del autor! ¿La consecuencia? Esta es la descripción del profesor Lessig:

«The consequence of this ecology of creativity is that the vast majority of documentaries from the twentieth century cannot legally be restored or redistributed. They sit on film library shelves, many of them dissolving, since they were produced on nitrate-based film, and most of them forgotten, since no content company or anyone else can do anything with them. In this sense, most of these works have been made orphans by a set of agreements concluded at their birth, which–like lead in gasoline–were introduced without any public recognition of their inevitable toxicity.»

Luego de plantear esta sombría imagen el profesor Lessig compara la situación con la de los libros impresos: definitivamente no se presenta el problema de los documentales. Los libros escritos antes de 1923 son de dominio público y pueden ser explotados comercialmente  de manera libre. Incluso los libros cuyos autores aún detentan el derecho de explotar de manera exclusiva los derechos de autor no presentan un gran escollo para el demandante: ahí están las bibliotecas, ahí están las librerías de segunda… Así se pregunta el autor de la crónica, ¿qué tal que se aplicar a los textos impresos la regla de las citas aplicada a los documentales? ¿qué ocurriría si cada autor tuviera que pedir permiso para citar otra obra? Y al revés, ¿por qué no se estableció para los documentales la misma regla que para los textos escritos?

En este punto, el profesor de Harvard se pregunta por nuestro «futuro cultural»:

«In this contrast between books and documentaries, there is a warning about our future. What are the rules that will govern culture for the next hundred years? Are we building an ecology of access that demands a lawyer at every turn of the page? Or have we learned something from the mess of the documentary-film past, and will we create instead an ecology of access that assures copyright owners the incentive they need, while also guaranteeing culture a future?»

Acto seguido entra en el tema en cuestión: el acuerdo de transacción sobre el proyecto Google Books… pero no lo voy a resumir, ¡les propongo que lo lean!… Bueno pero para que se interesen más le cuento que la crónica describe de una manera sencilla y clara el proyecto de Google Books, el caso mismo, una reflexión sobre el futuro del acceso a la cultura al que podría llevarnos el acuerdo como está redactado a la fecha y finalmente las bases para una propuesta alternativa que permita evitar el desastre. Bueno, no quiero dejar pasar algunas citas que plantean el «almendrón» del punto de vista del profesor Lessig sobre la consecuencias del acuerdo si este se llega a dar:

«The main thrust in almost all of these attacks, however, misses the real reason to be concerned about the future that this settlement will build. For the problem here is not just antitrust; it is not just privacy; it is not even the power that this (enormously burdensome) free library will give this already dominant Internet company. Indeed, the problem with the Google settlement is not the settlement. It is the environment for culture that the settlement will cement. For it practically guarantees that we will repeat the cultural-environmental errors of our past, by now turning books into documentary film. (…) The deal constructs a world in which control can be exercised at the level of a page, and maybe even a quote. It is a world in which every bit, every published word, could be licensed. It is the opposite of the old slogan about nuclear power: every bit gets metered, because metering is so cheap. We begin to sell access to knowledge the way we sell access to a movie theater, or a candy store, or a baseball stadium. We create not digital libraries, but digital bookstores: a Barnes & Noble without the Starbucks. (…)

We are about to change that past, radically. And the premise for that change is an accidental feature of the architecture of copyright law: that it regulates copies. In the physical world, this architecture means that the law regulates a small set of the possible uses of a copyrighted work. In the digital world, this architecture means that the law regulates everything. For every single use of creative work in digital space makes a copy. Thus–the lawyer insists–every single use must in some sense be licensed. Even the scanning of a book for the purpose of generating an index–the action at the core of the Google book case–triggers the law of copyright, because that scanning, again, produces a copy.

And what this means, or so I fear, is that we are about to transform books into documentary films. The legal structure that we now contemplate for the accessing of books is even more complex than the legal structure that we have in place for the accessing of films. Or more simply still: we are about to make every access to our culture a legally regulated event, rich in its demand for lawyers and licenses, certain to burden even relatively popular work. Or again: we are about to make a catastrophic cultural mistake. (…) However clever the settlement, however elegant the technology, we should keep Peter Drucker’s words clear in our head: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.» (…)

But why should copyright owners not be permitted to agree to whatever complicated system of access they want? It’s their property, isn’t it? Here we come back to Property 101. The law has always set limits on the freedom of property owners to allocate their property as they want. Families in Britain wanted to control how estates passed down the family line. At a certain point, their wants became way too complicated. The response was rules–such as the Rule Against Perpetuities–designed to enhance the efficiency of the market by limiting the freedom of property owners to place conditions on their property, thus making it possible for property to move more simply. That is precisely the impulse I wish to recommend here: that we limit the freedom of lawyers to craft infinitely complicated agreements governing culture, so that access to our culture can be preserved. (…)

I have no clear view. I only know that the two extremes that are before us would, each of them, if operating alone, be awful for our culture. The one extreme, pushed by copyright abolitionists, that forces free access on every form of culture, would shrink the range and the diversity of culture. I am against abolitionism. And I see no reason to support the other extreme either–pushed by the content industry–that seeks to license every single use of culture, in whatever context. That extreme would radically shrink access to our past.

Instead we need an approach that recognizes the errors in both extremes, and that crafts the balance that any culture needs: incentives to support a diverse range of creativity, with an assurance that the creativity inspired remains for generations to access and understand. This may be too much to ask. The idea of balanced public policy in this area will strike many as oxymoronic. It is thus no wonder, perhaps, that the likes of Google sought progress not through better legislation, but through a clever kludge, enabled by genius technologists. But this is too important a matter to be left to private enterprises and private deals. Private deals and outdated law are what got us into this mess. Whether or not a sensible public policy is possible, it is urgently needed.»