Round One

Authors: 1
Sanctimonious Corporate Pirates: 0

Love the lively tone of Quillblog. But calling Google’s plan “evilish” makes Qb seem either uninformed (which can’t be the case, given the great info consistently passed along here about the whole thing) and kind of silly, if not inflammatory. I don’t know about the rest of your readers, but I’d rather find a voice of reason, if not objectivity, here than boring paranoid conspiracy theories.

The headline was a play on Google’s motto (“Don’t be Evil”) – and purposely silly. Some who object to the initial settlement would probably call it a little bit evil, so I was giving a nod to that opinion – doesn’t mean I share it.

A lot of difficult words in the settlement agreement. I think it is not evilish. it might be worst. Google makes our search better. I used bing some time ago and I thing google search much better.

Given the tone of Google’s web-conversation (casual, a little bit goofy), the seriousness most publishers, authors, etc., approach the settlement, and Google’s plans for the scans (control every book, but promise to share them), I’d say evilish is completely reflective of the Google situation.
The article itself is very much a voice of reason. Also, this isn’t Omni and it isn’t the magazine itself, it’s the blog, and I think people tend to forget that.

MS says: “…boring paranoid conspiracy theories”

When a huge corporation proposes to subvert copyright (the foundation of authors’ & publishers’ livelihoods) by unilaterally seizing control of all published works in existence, and puts the onus on authors to “opt out” of their scheme, the word “evilish” seems a pretty mild description, and the reality of their plans is more disturbing than a lot of conspiracy theories.

To me it’s like getting upset that someone has decided to go around picking up pennies from sidewalks, gutters, and subway tracks. On a small scale, we might think such an activity was eccentric, but no big deal. But if a gigantic company decided to do it in such a way that the total number of pennies collected amounted to something, it would make people mad, even if they were going to share the cumulative result of collecting all those pennies. Google is big and very well organized, but where is the evidence in anything they’re doing — much of which is to provide incredible useful free tools millions of people use hundreds of times a day — is evil. Copyright laws came into being before the Internet; a lot of them will be adjusted in its wake — which, by the way, is what all laws are supposed to do over time. If the law weren’t malleable, we’d be living in a pretty scary world.

Nic says: “this isn’t Omni and it isn’t the magazine itself, it’s the blog, and I think people tend to forget that.” I didn’t forget. The writers who post also write for Omni and the magazine, and some of them have their own blogs. Quillblog is getting more lively because of all this; on the other hand, sometimes it feels muddled because of it too. The newsy sounding headline, “Google thwarted in its evilish plan,” to me, is an example of it getting muddled.

I guess I’ve just come to expect two different things from Omni and from Quill Blog, whereas QB tends to be more conversational and Omni more professional. When I visit the Globe and Mail or NY Times, I expect very different things from blogs vs. articles, and I think Quill holds that standard too. That’s why I’ll read a blog, for commentary on a situation after I’ve read a few articles on a subject.

This piece in Slate is pertinent to this discussion:http://www.slate.com/id/2229391.

“Google thwarted in its evilish plan”

Good headline…got me to click…did what it was meant to do…then followed up with some useful info and links. Great job.