Public Nuisances: Rediscovering Columbus Day/Google and the Guild
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRELL, JR. Rediscovering Columbus Day WASHINGTON AUTUMN IN NEW YORK"—the words cascaded from Sinatra on my iPod, and I was on my way. It was a...
...The musicians and their representatives fought this infringement of copyright and now get fair compensation via iTunes and similar arrangements...
...He would be around all weekend and you can be sure that at every event he attended—whether the elegant Saturday night gala at the Waldorf or the Sunday morning concert at Columbus Circle or the parade itself—the Justice was a memorable presence...
...Can I be sure of its authenticity...
...But this year the Columbus Week featured something at once extraordinary and timely...
...PUBLIC NUISANCES Finally, along with the ancient documents there was an exhibit focusing on New York's hometown boy, Scalia...
...In the case of Google there is the other problem of not compensating publishers and authors for their work...
...Google and the Guild NEW YORK ALAWSUIT BY THE AUTHORS GUILD and sundry others against Google provokes some thought in me on writing, publishing, the Internet, and this wondrous thing called Google...
...There was the Connecticut Courant and Weekly Intelligencer's original 1787 printing of the Constitution, and there were letters from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson...
...PUBLIC NUISANCES R . E M M E T T T Y R R E L L, J R. Rediscovering Columbus Day WASHINGTON AUTUMN IN NEW YORK"—the words cascaded from Sinatra on my iPod, and I was on my way...
...A lot of the information abounds with error, some of it difficult to discern...
...Google proposes to scan and make available great chunks of books for free...
...Why does it seem so exciting," Old Blue Eyes crooned on...
...When I go to a library to borrow a book I can be pretty certain that the contents of the book have not been tampered with...
...My answer to him, wherever he might be, was that in New York the 2005 Columbus Week Celebrations were underway...
...The jousting is almost always about serious matters, often the role of the courts in our system of government, and the relevance of our Constitution...
...Can I be equally certain when I take writing off the Internet that it has not been adulterated...
...In fact, any other evidence that the piece came from one magazine or another could be faked...
...He is famed for his intellectual jousting but also for his good nature...
...One such document was an exact engraving of the Declaration of Independence dating from 1823...
...You can be sure Justice Scalia brought passion to the Columbus Day Parade...
...Justice Scalia is renowned for his learning, his wit, and his love of debate...
...The representatives of old media who wail that the Internet suffersfrom a lack of editors have a point...
...The books that Google intends to scan may be adulterated...
...That reminded me of a testimonial delivered to Scalia recently by one of the greatest living Supreme Court lawyers, former Solicitor General Ted Olson...
...Someone sending me this piece across the Internet could be deceiving me in a way that someone delivering a magazine to me or even photocopied pages of a magazine could not...
...I just have no idea of how to resolve their concerns consistent with sound libertarian principles—but to return to the question of the authenticity of writing carried across the Internet...
...Yet for now there is a legal battle and only the lawyers can be happy...
...It was a perfect time to spend a few days in Manhattan...
...Jefferson's correspondent, Filippo Mazzei, a Florentine, actually came to live near him in Virginia...
...The most interesting letters were found in the correspondence of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin with two distinguished 18th-century Italian intellectuals about the possible development of law in America...
...He told me it was from the New Yorker, a minor point of clarification, perhaps, but suggestive of the problem I am raising...
...Said Lawrence Auriana, the foundation's ebullient president: "The United States Supreme Court, which is the subject of great interest recently, is one of America's most important contributions to civilization, yet its history and functions are little understood by many people...
...Thus in Vanderbilt Hall there was an exhibit on the workings of the Court with storyboards that with the coming hearings on Harriet Miers, the latest nominee to the Court, should be of immediate interest to everyone...
...Google is making a profit from ill-gotten material...
...Both have intellectual property rights that must be respected if publishing and writing are to continue as profitable endeavors...
...I doubt it...
...NOVEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 79...
...When I buy a magazine I can be completely certain that I am getting a writer's work as it appeared in that magazine...
...The lawsuit alleges that vast copyright infringement is about to be perpetrated by Google...
...The problem is that much of the printed material to be scanned by Google is copyrighted and ought not to be used without payment to publishers and authors...
...For that matter, even the contents of the piece could be faked...
...In 78 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005 honoring Scalia, the son of Italian immigrants (his father was a professor of Romance languages), the Columbus Citizens Foundation, which sponsors the Columbus Week Celebration, put together an exceptional Supreme Court Exhibit in Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall...
...From the Old Country the Italians have sent sports cars, wines, and other specimens of Italian art and commerce...
...Yet there is a difference...
...Undoubtedly the Internet is here to stay and will increasingly be used to convey print, but it has its problems...
...This $90 billion search engine is about to increase its business by scanning the entire contents of five of the world's leading libraries and making the contents of that vast scan searchable for free to anyone capable of gazing into a computer...
...Scalia is one of the most invigorating minds in Washington and one of the most principled...
...The article in question I thought had been published in New York magazine...
...In the Napster controversy musicians were being ripped off when their fans were uploading their music and distributing it freely...
...This raises quite another point but one related to the question of the authority of what passes across the Internet...
...Print that comes across the Internet is not as trustworthy as print that one buys in a store or picks up in a library...
...It might be one thing to make books from the public domain, say Shakespeare or Chaucer, free...
...Highlighted here was a statement by him that illuminates the controversies over the present Supreme Court vacancy and probably those to come...
...He brings passion to logic...
...This strikes me as indisputable, but before reviewing the issues raised by the Authors Guild allow me to bring up problems with the Internet that have troubled me for as long as I have used the Internet...
...Doubt-less this wondrous thing called Google will arrive at a similar arrangement...
...There is a way that the interests of both sides in this squabble can be resolved...
...One week after President Bush announced yet another nominee to the Supreme Court, prompting another ghoulish Senate hearing, the liveliest mind now on the Court, Antonin Scalia, served as Grand Marshal of the Columbus Day Parade...
...The Constitution is an enduring document but not a living one...
...The other day I was talking to a writer about an article of his that I read...
...He has now been recognized as the originator of Jefferson's famous term, "All men are created equal...
...But it is a kind of pilfering to lift work that is copyrighted...
...As the pages had been printed from the Internet they did not have the New Yorker's distinctive type style...
...I think that is a problem...
...Google is a commercial enterprise, a library is not...
...And its meaning must not be altered to suit the whims of society...
...His opinions have special weight because they are written in a particularly engaging, persuasive, and readable style...
...There would be exuberant celebrations of Italian-Americans at song, in the kitchen, and engaged in all the other civilized pursuits for which they have demonstrated such flair...
...Such print is more difficult to obtain and more expensive, but it is more real...
...Google claims that it is only doing on a vast scale what libraries do on a small scale...
...Franklin's correspondent, the Neapolitan Gaetano Filangieri, was a proponent of the free press, proportionality in criminal punishment, free trade, and other ideas deemed daring in his time but soon to be part of American law...
...There was also an exhibit of old and invaluable documents that suggest the development of the Court in our constitutional evolution...
Vol. 38 • November 2005 • No. 9
