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Authors Guild Sues Google Over Print Program
heavy snowfall writes to tell us that The Authors Guild has filed a class action lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit claims that Google's scanning and digitizing of library books as a part of the Google Print Project constitutes "massive copyright infringement". In addition to the lawsuit The Authors Guild has also issued a press release to explain its actions.
... i just want to remind you that Google is a for-profit company
If they are still under a copyright, I don't see how Google could provide such a service. AFAIK, I am not allowed to borrow a book from a library and make a complete photocopy of it even for private use.
The owls are not what they seem
Google Print Program allows me to search the text of books in print, I can see each hit as a book and also the search in context (i.e. browse a sample chapter that contains the search), and Google provides links so that I can purchase the book online.
Don't these authors want to sell their books? It is not like I can download the whole text (unless I actually knew a set of unique searches that would mean I could access each chapter as a sample), so where is the copyright infringement?
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
This kind of crap just irritates me. Copyright laws are painfully outdated in the digital age, and yet time and time again those who sell information (in whatever format, music, movie, now books) are constantly standing in the way of progress. What we need is the free and unrestricted flow of information. I've looked over Google Print, and i see nothing for these authors to object over. If anything, its a massive windfall for them, its the perfect resource for finding a relevant book on a given topic. Need a book on differential forms and tensor calculus? Thousands and thousands of results. Its essentially free and unlimited advertising. If Google combined this with pblishing on demand, they could put every publisher in existence not only out of business, but do it while offering far better deals for the authors.
but here in Oxford I thought google was only scanning really old stuff that is too fragile to be read. The Bod (our library) has some very old stuff.
And before anyone from the US replies, old in Oxford means pre 1600 ie before anyone went to your country from Europe and killed the natives.
While they might legally have a point about Google having to ask for permission (IANAL), Google Print is just one huge f***** advertisement for their books.
Google is providing a useful service that allows you to find the books you want, so that you can purchase them legally from bookshops.
They are showing a little bit of content in order to let people make up their minds, analogous to be able to browse a book at a bookstore to find out if you want it or not.
This is simply taking common fair use in a bookstore (browsing) and moving it onto the digital domain.
While I agree Google should probably have asked the publishers for permission, a lawsuit is just far beyond common decency.
It is time copyright gets a huge makeover to make it more edible for consumers and work better in the new "digital reality", and I am not talking about stronger measurements and DRM.
What happens when these books degrade and nothing is left but a memory of what they were?
Welcome to the digital generation people of the authors guild. This is a big battle between old value people and the new digital wave that google is riding.
I am not saying that it is google's responsibility to be the sole holder of books and other information, that is why MSN, Yahoo and other organisations should start a similar program. Or even the government to archive part of our society for future generations.
I found it very revealing that in their press release they say that google is uploading "Public Domain Works" -- and then goes on to say that this is wrong and is against copyright law? Maybe it is just badly written (>sniggle) but they should be careful with their words; a public domain piece of text is, by definition something anyone can use.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out because it will have a lot to say about how copyright and intellectual property are being interpreted in the courts.
On the one had the authors do have a point: regardless of how little of the copyrighted works Google exposes to people searching, the fact is that Google itself is copying and making use of the whole work. Google is a for profit enterprise, and making books available for searching is part of that endeavour, so having a copy of the text is worth something to Google, yet they haven't sought any agreement with the authors to do so.
On the other hand, this is just stupid! What the fuck are they thinking? Google is effectively providing free advertising for them. Moreover such a service is obviously invaluable to the wider public, making it much easier for them to find (and then buy) the information they want.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Let us hope that they lose this one big time. It seems Google already has plenty of safeguards in place.
Sure, with the convuleted interest ridden mess the copyright system is the Writer Guild might actually win this.
Because, why would Google be allowed to copy all these books to their hard disks, and then make a mint from advertising by showing peeks of it to searchers.
They sure aren't paying anyone for the priviledge.
In university they have pretty big posters against wholesale copying of library books above the photocopiers, with all the usual heavy handed copyright warnings.
It seems technology, is as per usual, ahead of the law. Google would have to establish some kind of copyright free zone (bit like a tax free export zone) where they can safely process search actions on this huge Alexandria library.
Better beat around some congress critters to support this as the potential benefit to mankind ( access to all written knowlegde current and past, no matter how insightful or inane) would probably be worthy of "World Wonder" status, and give the society that has it a serious scientific advantage.
Google did talk to the associated press, however.
A sues B. B sues C. C sues everybody.
I think China (that comunist country) is going to be the next Big Fish, because enterprises are more interested in get easy money suing everybody than in make new products or offer new services. And they make consumer electronic that sux because you are a potentia Pirate so the devices decides what you can do and what you can't do.
I for one welcom or new chinese overlords.
My city: Barcelona.
yep, print it on the backside of the title page of each book. /book/pages[1..231] noscan noindex nofollow
I can go to my local library and get any CD or book, for a limited time. If google wants to be the online library of the future, I could see them implementing some kind of thing where you are tagged by state, and they have like 10 books that you can check out per state (10 google branches). I mean, if the argument is that 'you could copy the text and have a local copy'.. well christ, any real library book I check out I could photocopy or OCR, it sounds to me like they have a fundamental issue with the entire library system to begin with.
I've owned several web pages which Google has copied onto their servers via indexing and Google cache.
They never asked me for permission, and I'm pretty sure they all contained the footer (c) Me, All Rights Reserved.
In fact, the entire web is copyrighted by numerous authors and corporations, and I'm pretty sure Google has never asked anyone for permission.
Google can't even hide behind the mantra of not being able to micromanage automatic indexing, because the ENTIRE WEB is copyrighted in some form or another.
I'm going to completely disregard that my web pages increased in value by Google announcing their presence to the world, and rather sue them for copyright infringement. I'm also suing Microsoft, Yahoo and Altavista.
Anyone for a class action lawsuit?
It is with some shock that I read about your latest decision to take legal action against Google, which could, and should, be interpreted as a direct attack against a more progressive and free society.
Whether or not you approve of Google, the company's "libarary" program has made a bold move towards an age where information is searchable to everyone. The ability to see inside a book, albeit only an excerpt at a time, which is stored deep within a vault on the otherside of the globe has to be a great thing. This assists everyone from casual browsers of the internet to academic reseachers, such as myself. Upon utilising the search engine and associated search algorithms we can look and search within every title and work for relevant information, and disregard the irrelevancies, with no more hassle than a couple of clicks on a browser. This is a far greater model than the overburdening and cumbersome system currently in operation, where books have to be physically sought after, a greatly innefficient, resource consuming and wasteful affair.
Surely Google's system represents an electronic library bookshelf of infinite size, where the user can browse at will until the relevant material is found. To sue Google is equivalent to taking legal action against the British library for allowing users to flick through books. Libraries also allows users to read the entire text of a book, not merely small excerpts, so surely there is a greater case for taking legal action against the library services of every nation, university and school in the entire world. No such action has been taken, and indeed I pray it would never be.
Indeed I agree that it is a gray area that Google is a profit making company and will be generating revenue indirectly through advertising, and possibly the sale of hard and electronic copies of the full text. Yet, had the traditional organisations of the book publishing and writing world such as yourselves, the Authors Guild, taken steps to create an electronic source back when the internet was growing the need for Google, a corporation, to do this would have been neglible. Your legal action is not a reaction against copyright infingement but an indicator of failure on your, and your peers, behalf. To prevent access to a searchable library to the entire populous of the world is to hide information and create a teired society, those who have access to the information and those that do not. This is backward and unjust.
You have failed to provide or encourage authors, your clients, to present their work in a relevant medium, electronic, to the masses, their customers, and as such have stifled your industry, the fallout and backlash is obvious to see when observing the blogging phenomena that has grown in the last few years. The Authors guild has failed to keep up with current technology and culture trends and as such has resorted to hiding behind the somewhat dated copyright laws of your country.
Whatever your views on the Google corporation it is unjust to take legal action against such a noble scheme and I urge you to revoke your action and change your policies.
Have these people really thought this through? Apparently, the writers thinking on this has gotten as far as "Google are going to make a fortune off our backs" and "we can sue them for millions", but stopped short of "this might really help potential readers to find my book". A bit shortsighted?
The limit is easy to circumvent.
Find a page from the book. Google displays the previous and the next page(s) too.
Look at previous page, and search on a term at the start of the previous page, and you will get the page before that, etc.
The result is that you have access to the whole book.
I do think Google is breaking copyright law with this, but since the authors will most likely not sell any book less (the method I just described is boring and cumbersome), I think they should find a way to cooperate. They could even make monye from it by turning this google method into the iTunes of books.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
America has still an Authors' Guild? Cool!
Now, I just wonder why they asked the Lawyers Guild to sort things out with the Clacks Guild, "Vetinari's method" being that of letting Guild to enforce law by themselves by using, at option, a pointy stick or a big club.
But perhaps it's just a --ing polite way to say they don't --ing want the books to be read by everybody. Just from those willing to pay some good dollars the right people.
Anyway, I'll just believe that Google will bring the Authors' Guild kicking and screaming out of the Century of the Fruitbat.
(Sorry for the useless Discworld parallel, but I couldn't resist anyway.)
-- "The Truth shall make ye fret'"
Mr. Goodmountain doing one of the first movable typo.
42.
You can use the NOARCHIVE meta tag if you don't like Google caching your pages. You can also ask for your pages to be removed.
Many of you are claiming it's free advertisement, but consider the following variation where I made a complete photocopy of a book without the author's or publisher's permission, but in return advertised it to people.
By showing only a portion or sample of the work may sound fine and dandy, but if anyone can do this without permission, I can easily see this being abused. Google's setting a very risky precedent.
If I make a service called "Krunk4Ever Print", does that entitle me to the right to take any copyrighted text and digitize it into my library without permission? Though I may not be as big as Google, what gives Google the right to do it and not any small company or individual?
HD Trailers
It's worth bearing in mind that copyright is a protective measure given by a government in return for obliging the publisher to make the work publicly available.
The ultimate aim is to increase the education of the public through availability of information - not to bestow some inalienable commercial right.
Must resist ... beating the dead horse...
1. Google received billions from their IPO.
2. Sue Google for infringement.
3. Profit!!!
It felt good to that out of my system.
There's not much difference, really. Both intend for you to view the contents of the book, and claim to provide a free advert. It took me 30 seconds to find a flaw in Amazon that lets me download the entirety of the book for free. So the sale is lost, and it's not advertising. Google'll be the same.
The difference is whether the publisher agrees to it. (The author has no say in this.) If you read the license agreement (yes - there is one!) when you buy the book it says "not stored in electronic retrieval format". Browsing in a bookshop doesn't break this... storing in Google Print does. This trumps all other laws of "freedom" unless a precedence is set in court.
Disclaimer: I am a writer with my books on Amazon.
Perhaps the suit is to make Google ask first, instead of allowing Google to proceed unless authors specifically opt out.
Yes, it may be good advertising, but an author should have a right to opt in, not a right to opt out. Google should be asking first.
The US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right to format-shift, and scanning certainly qualifies for this. The very limited browsing capability sure looks like fair use to me. Where this gets sticky is the matter of posession. If Google is hosting this on behalf of the libraries, the literal fact that the bits are on disks in Google's data centers just makes them nice people. If Google is doing something with the work as a whole that's not covered under fair use, and they're not doing it on behalf of the owners of the original published copies from which the images were scanned, then they've infringed copyright, unless they actually have legal copies on their own shelves somewhere. I could see the argument going either way on this, and ultimately it may hinge on the role the libraries have in this.
That said, at worst, Google is making (and offering to remove on request) at most single copy that would be unauthorized under a strict reading of copyright law, assuming the context they're showing is indeed held to be fair use. So, the authors want to sue over a single easy opt-out copy of each work that will drive far greater sales. Why are they doing this?
It's about control. It's always about control. Read the press release. "...the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights..." But the authors (almost always) aren't actually the legal holders of those copyrights! Authors have been getting screwed by publishers for centuries, but at least things have settled down into a predictable pattern of getting screwed. They don't know what changes are coming next, but they can hardly be blamed for suspecting that as individuals they're less equipped to adapt to whatever changes are coming than the centralized publishing houses, and that they'll end up even worse off.
Ultimately, the decoupling of data and media and obsolescence of traditional publishing will benefit authors, but it may take a very long time to happen.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
What's the root of this conflict? Money!
...) get bigger exposure of their books. This might lead to the financial advantage that book sales will increase. Probably, for a lot of them this potential benefit is not enough and hard to predict on long term.
Google will probably get a lot of financial revenue from the selling ads on their pages offering book content. The copyright holders of the books (authors, publishers,
Maybe Google should treat books in the same way as websites in the adsense program. This would mean that Google shares its financial income from Google Print with the copyright holders as it does with web masters who use Google adsense on their sites. It this would seem as profitable for copyright holders as it is now for certain web masters, there could be a chance that copyright holders of book will even be eager to participate in the Google Print program.
So, Google, share your profits of Google Print with the copyright holders!
Google is not a company lacking in intelligence or money. I wonder if their using the library product to actually draw out a suit. The rationale being that copyright law and digital media has created a vast space of uncertainty around what can and can't be done with copies of a work. Google's interest in clearing out that uncertainty is that if they can legally gain the ability to selectively duplicate copyrighted content they can extend their search capabilities far beyond public content published to the web or other fora and also pull in a hefty payback from booksellers and other advertisers. They've started w/ books, but imagine if they legally could index songs, movies, and less television/radio/other media? They wouldn't allow you to have a copy of the work, but could index it, show you a clip, and point you to the correct source to purchase the rights to the media. Massive speculation on my part.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-prin t-and-authors-guild.html
... any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program.
Let's be clear: Google doesn't show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more).
Not wanting Google to scan your book is like not wanting Google to crawl your website. Pretty silly but authors can completely opt out.
You obviously know nothing about copyright law, so how about you just shut the fuck up? I am so sick of these knee-jerk idiotic statements from people on Slashdot. Fuck you. Fuck all of you.
it seems every fuckwit out there thinks they can sue and go for the settlment jackpot. does the authors guild own these copyrights? "massive infringment"? sounds a lot like the vage claims SCO made. besides, i'm no expert but i do believe partal reproduction IS legal. or am i infringing on something just by using "a" i mean surely it's part of some copyrighted work! while we are at it, if amazon DARE to show a picture of a book they are selling, LETS SUE THEM ITS INFRINGMENT!!!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I don't buy movies or music from *AA companies any more, to protest their tactics. But I have bought literally 10,000s of books in my life and will probably buy a lot more. How can I make sure never to buy a book from an Authors Guild writer or company?
Only buy typewritten, photocopied and staple-bound books from your local hippie-collective bookshop.
And then copy them yourselves and don't worry about the bookshop going out of business, because information wants to be free and they'd be uber-capitalist hypocrites if they or their authors were to sue you for wanting compensation for copying their material.
Listen; as I said elsewhere, Google are a commercial company (albeit one who usually behave in a better manner than the stereotype), the Author's Guild members have both the moral right to say (within reason) what is done with their work and to receive compensation for it. Especially w.r.t. reference works, searchability *might* damage the sales of books; it might encourage sales in other cases, but let's not consider this as a black and white issue. If nothing else, the authors themselves should have the right to that decision.
Personally, had I written a book, I would not consider someone copying it without permission and making it searchabe to be acceptable by default.
It might "benefit" people in general, but if it doesn't benefit the author too, I think they have a right to be unhappy about this.
You, of course, have the right to boycott their books, but this seems like a kneejerk "information wants to be free and anyone who stops this is bad" reaction without considering the wider issues.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It just suck, but of course we'll say its great cause the USA want us too but I think its about time we realize the very nasty nature of capitalism: consenting slow self-destruction. Our society, freedoms and aspirations are just all going down the drain but it good for the economy so...
I do understand the legal issues that the copyright holders have, but I think that in their quest to control what they own, they are also minimizing the value of those items.
What is the use of something if not too many people know that it's there and can't purchase it/don't have access to it? Since Google Print started, I have been able to find books that are actually relevant. This is especially important in an multidisciplinary academic environment where you may be researching a topic and not know the exact domain.
In fact, without this service I would never have bought the 4 books I did. Granted, these purchases couldn't automatically be traced to Google Print, but maybe if online sellers created a checkbox (Google Print recommended) they would be able to find out just how many sales were attributable to it and would give them a general idea of whether it does more good than harm or vice versa.
That analogy isn't really relevant. Google isn't posting the entire work online. They also believe that their actions are legal, so they don't characterize what they're doing as blatant infringement. Google is transforming a work by digitizing it. The use may be fair, like Kelly v. Arribasoft's case that determined that the creation and posting of thumbnails is fair.
You also point out one of the disengenuous parts of the original article. If the use is fair as Google contends, Google doesn't need the authors approval or permission to take this action, although receiving their permission would be nice. Giving them an opt out in the manner that Google is may help their fair use argument as well.
While we're at it, let's point out that the authors are not typically the holders of their copyright in the current system. Then let's point out that the historical purpose of copyright law in the United States isn't to protect the authors or copyright holders. The Constitutional basis is: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; -U.S. CONST., art. I, 8, cl. 8.
Protecting the authors is the means of encouraging the creation of new works, but it's not the point itself. The point is to ultimately benefit the public. This article relies on an appeal to the moral rights of the authors. The US has limited implementation of moral rights, but so far they've all flown in the face of the traditional rationale for copyright. Copyright law as implemented now appears to be doing more harm then good. Look at many of the DMCA's provisions.
My only problem with Google Print so far is their reported contracts with the libraries, which seem kind of unfair to the libraries.
I wonder why the AG hasn't done what Google is doing, to being able to search in books is one of the most sought after features among report writers I work with, it's the holy grail. there seems to have been no steps at all to acheive this during the 10 years of "internet revolution".
/Erik
Google press (or something simmilar), is one of the biggest steps we have made for a long while. I really hate that you can be so narrow mind to protest against it, are they afraid of having their scripts up for the whole world to search in?
Sure they can protest against copyright infringment, it's their right. But the question is what's the best solution, just to protest or offer a real solution to a real problem?
Best whishes
Suppose someone started a service where, if you sent them a phrase, they would look through the books they own, and report back to you the sentences containing that phrase. The provider owns the books, and is only quoting little bits of them, so this is clearly fair use. (This may seem absurd, but such exchanges do occur in a limited way; for instance in genealogy, someone might offer to do lookups of a particular person's name.)
Google Print is providing the same service, except it is automated, so I don't think the service violates copyright. What might violate copyright is that they've converted printed material into electronically accessible material. If they actually own the books, then this is the same format-conversion question we've been running into with audio: can someone who buys a DVD transfer it onto videotape for their own use? Same question.
Now if Google doesn't own the books then that is a problem, because they are taking a copy from a library and then both of them own the copy. Either Google should buy a copy of the books it sells (or just pay for it; they certainly don't want a warehouse of physical books somewhere which they don't use), or they should set up the databases with the libraries themselves, so that it's the libraries who own the scans.
Someone mentioned whether it was legitimate for Google to use these books to make money without giving the authors a cut of the profits. As an academic, I use a lot of books in my business and I don't pay the authors anything but the cost of the book.
That all being said, Google might consider not providing the books of the publishers who object; if this is really a boon for the publishers, then they will eventually see the error of their ways.
No, it's not. There are a myriad of things a person can do with a book without the permission of the copyright holder. Reading it being first and foremost among said things. The *only* thing copyright gives them *any* control over is, well, copying. But it certainly doesn't give them complete control. Fair use can be stretched pretty far in some cases.
What Google is doing is rather unique. They are essentially indexing books the same way search engines index the web. One could argue that they are making complete copies for commercial purposes, which can't be considered fair use, but the same could be argued for the entirety of the web. Making something available, whether it be text on paper, digital media, or analog video and audio does not imply the right to copy. So the argument that putting something on the web implicitly gives search engines the right to index is false. But search engine indexing, which creates and permanently stores complete copies by its very nature, has survived the courts so far.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This would be true if they were publishing the entirety of the works. But they are not.
Just because some of the text that Google wants to use is copyrighted does not automatically make it illegal for them to use. That's the bone of contention here.
The Print Publisher project isn't illegal in the slightest, because it is opt in by the copyright holders.
The Print Library project seems, to my wholly un-law schooled mind, like it has a pretty decent case for fair use. Yes, Google is (or at least is going to try) to make money off the searches. But the self-imposed restrictions on how much of the text displayed is so limited as to be slightly more useful than a card catalogue search. Thats all. I'll grant that some very determined user or users could possibly acquire an entire replica of a copyrighted work. However, you might then want to consider suing bookstores. They'll let me sit there and read whole chapters of a book without purchasing it. And if I was a very determined person, I could violate copyrights there, too.
I don't expect morality, equality, consistency, or justice from the law. I expect only legality.
This doesn't seem likely to go anywhere. It seems reasonable that:
a) Google and the libraries had considered copyright issues very carefully before doing this; and
b) that the offended authors had already tried negotiating with Google.
So, there are probably a battery of high paid Google lawyers who have already determined that Google's actions are legal. Following which Google evidently felt it did not have to negotiate and likely expected a lawsuit to follow. To think otherwise is to assume that Google is run by a bunch of idiots which is very clearly not the case.
The Guild and authors are blowing smoke in that time-honoured American tradition of suing as the last possible recourse when all other avenues for a blatant money grab have failed.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
First let me start by thanking you to take the time & effort to produce a book and add to human culture & knowledge.
Would you have written the book if copyrights didn't exist?
The same could be said of producers in regards to consumer's rights under copyrights. e.g. DRM, cease&desist lawsuits over fair-use(think blackboxvoting and Diebold).
Copyrights in the US were designed to promoted the Arts & Sciences. They are granted by the US Gov't in exchange for the author agreeing to let the work enter the public domain after the copyright term expires. Original term was 14 years aka a *temporary* right.
This is basically a social contract between the author and the general public. The public("We the people") agree to grant the author exclusive rights to the work for the first few years of its life to re-coup production costs in exchange for open & free access to the work a few years down the road.
Today's copyrights last life of the author plus 70 years or 95 years for a corporation. Odds are good that this will be extended again, mostly likely when Mickey is about to become public domain.
Under current copyright law, since RMS is around 45, Emacs won't enter the public domain until some time after 2100.
The social contract on which copyrights are based has been perverted. The public no longer receives a benefit from granting a copyright; open & free access to the work, a continuely growing public domain.
In this context copyrights are meaningless to the public. They are not receiving their end of the social contract. Why should they uphold their end of the contract?
/rant
Why/how would it elimate copyright? Google isn't providing whole works for download. They are just providing the ability to search.
What if it was the Library of Congress that was doing this instead of Google?
What if Google was doing this under contract for the Library of Congress?
Ummm, nothing copyrighted since 1923 will enter the public domain until 2019
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Ahh, but its a win win situation where the copyright holder (who was innocently assuming that they held the right to copy, surely they worked tirelessly and spend endless bribes in effords to nail it down for so many years) wasn't informed in advance that Google started ripping their print collection.
And that is why they are so pissed off.
They are probably actually not too afraid of Google starting to "leak" information,.. they go to some length to safeguard their procedures.
But how about the 13,000 websites that follow them doing the same thing? With Google's precedent, they can follow and start scanning to their hearts desire. They are sure to follow, funded by some entrepreneurial investors who will quickly fill the niches that Google deems unworthy for now.
One of them goes bust or gets hacked, and suddenly you have black market DVD's with every single SF novel published since 1950 appearing from China... (oh the horror!) Once the information bird is free from its cage it will fly.
Which brings me back to my earlier point of a copyright free zone, Google could get its sites certified and licenced to warehouse copyrighted knowlegde following proper safeguards to avoid such "radioactive" leaks.
Either that, or give up on copyright completely.
There's a compelling response to the lawsuit posted on the official Google Weblog.
Kevin Fox
Now that we have Google Earth... I just leave my books outside. Scan times do seem to be a bit slow though. Have to move the books inside when it rains.
Lets keep in mind a few things.
Google is being sued for a service that is not available to the public (or anyone).
Google has not yet even provided details about what the service actually is.
If they were not actually making copies of the text but, instead were building search trees, then they would be doing nothing illegal. Just this would have a great potential.
Hell, they could be building a modern library of Alexandria for safe keeping, or maybe they are brute force training language interpretation software, maybe the GoogleCluster has become self aware and its studying us humans.
I'm just sick of everyone jumping into a lawsuit before they even know what they are suing someone for. These guys are probably just using legal trickery to set up a precedent for compensation of digially distributed works instead of 'negotiating' contracts like in the old days.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I am not a member of the Author's Guild, but I do support their actions in this case, and I think that some of your points should be answered. You have raised an interesting argument, but I'm afraid that you are misinformed in quite a few places.
First, Google's "Library" program is not a bold move to make information searchable. When I started my first degree in 1995, from my own university library I could search for books by keyword from any university library on the continent, and borrow them through inter-library loan. Google's program would be a bit more comprehensive, but it is still more of the same. As for making older books available, the Gutenberg Project was the pioneer, not Google. Google is basically doing something similar, but with more money, and less tactfully.
Second, the library system doesn't quite work as you seem to believe it works. Libraries loan books out, but they do not publish them or distribute them. The closest they come is to sell off some of their older copies. And, when you take out a book from a library, a small royalty is paid to the author. There is a large line between loaning a book out and making hundreds of photocopies of that book without permission, and libraries do not cross it, although you are suggesting in this letter that they do.
Third, you are using technology issues to obscure the actual issue. The fact that Google is a profit making company is irrelevant to the complaint. The size of the database is irrelevant to the complaint. The complaint revolves around the fact that before copying material still in copyright, Google did not ask for permission. Besides being a matter of common courtesy, it would have been a simple matter to send a form letter explaining the project, and so long as the terms are not unreasonable, most of the authors I know, including myself, would actually support such a thing. However, as a matter of principle, you have to ask first.
Fourth, you are suggesting that authors and publishers are in some conspiracy to hide books from the general public. Besides being completely illogical (it would require that publishers deliberately shoot themselves in the foot sales-wise), it is also quite silly. Why would anybody want to create a society like this, particularly when all it would do is limit markets and create injustice? Most books are not state secrets. Sometimes a suit for copyright infringement is just a suit for copyright infringement.
Finally, and related to this odd conspiracy theory, you have conveniently forgotten that artists, musicians, and writers are often the most socially active people around. Harlan Ellison marched in the Civil Rights march around Alabama in the late '60s. A number of well known writers drove ambulances in World War II. The first thing any tyranny does once it takes control, from Stalin to Hitler, is put controls on the artistic professions. Quite frankly, your letter is a slap in all of our collective faces. We've fought against injustice around the world, and some of us have even been imprisoned, forced to flee our homes, or murdered for it. Our writing helps drive social progress. Many of us use our pens to stand up for YOUR rights, but what happens when we stand up for ours? We get accused of holding the world back, and in your letter, being part of some conspiracy to create what amounts to a tyranny. Perhaps you should actually read the Berne Convention, and try to understand just what rights we claim. You'll find that they are quite reasonable.
But regardless of this slap in the face, we will continue to fight against injustice with our pens. We will continue to drive society forward. We will continue to fight for YOUR rights in the best ways we know how. All we ask is that when we shed our metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears on your behalf, that you respect us for it, and respect our wishes regarding what we create. And if you can't give us that, I only have two words to say to you.
The second is "you". The first begins with "F". I think you can figure it out on your own.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
http://www.eff.org/IP/Linking/Kelly_v_Arriba_Soft/ 20030707_9th_revised_ruling.pdf
I believe this court decision should establish a precedent that the judge will be more likely to adhere to than not. However, I really hope Google wins and the precedent is upholded. If not, the floodgates would be open to all sorts of lawsuits by content owners against search engines, and web applications.