Google Responds to Authors Guild Lawsuit

Phoe6 writes "Google has responded to the Authors' Guild lawsuit of "massive copyright infringement". They point out that the Library Project is 'fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews.'"

Comments

Copyright Law

[op12]

...which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews.

Are they going to have reviews? Otherwise their use doesn't seem to fall under that.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Better tell them, then. They could save a lot of money and time with that advice.

Re:Copyright Law

[nacturation]

The use of from...to implies it's a range. So while it's possible that it's similar to saying "integers from 1 to 2", it could also be from 1 to 100 and they're glossing over the 2 to 99 part.

Re:Copyright Law

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Wow- before you quickly jump to Google's defense- Consider this: Wouldn't you feel awful if other people were able to read all of our informative and insightful posts without compensating us?
Which begs the question- has anyone ever trademarked the penisbird?

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they going to have reviews? Otherwise their use doesn't seem to fall under that.

Your logic astounds.

Re:Copyright Law

[spuke4000]

TFA says that in-copyright works will only have snippets of text associated with search terms, so only a small fraction of a book (or a small fraction of a few pages) will be shown by Google. This is similar to a snippet for a review.

What TFA does mention, but kind of glosses over, is that copyright holders have to opt-out of having their works marked as 'not copyrighted'. It seems that Google is being a little disingenuous. They know that not all copyright holders will opt out. It's kind of like saying 'If Tom Clancy does tell me otherwise, he won't mind if I photocopy his new book from the library.' IANAL, but I think it should be an opt-in system, no?

Re:Copyright Law

[Austerity Empowers]

My +5 Insightful, Interesting, Informative and Funny post are free.

Now the -1 Troll and -1 Flamebait stuff...that I want money for.

Re:Copyright Law

[carlos_benj]

...which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews.

Are they going to have reviews? Otherwise their use doesn't seem to fall under that.

No. They're going to be verbatim parodies of the original.

Re:Copyright Law

[Guysmiley777]

Until you've used the Google tool, please don't post on its merits or dangers. From what I've seen using the tool it really looks to be useful for researchers and students. Claiming this is stealing from authors it completely wrong headed. If anything this is a giant electronic library card catalog tool.

Corporate America of course won't be happy until you pay a per-word usage fee for reading a library book.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, you're retarded.

Re:Copyright Law

[lucky130]

Who cares if it falls under those specific examples of "fair use."

This is from copyright.gov:

One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright act (title 17, U.S. Code). One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of "fair use." Although fair use was not mentioned in the previous copyright law, the doctrine has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years. This doctrine has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered "fair," such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

            1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
            2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
            3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
            4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I think google's implementation of this project very clearly falls under scholarship and/or research purposes. Giving the reader brief snippets of the written work along with bibliographical information so they can find a copy of the work themselves certainly satisfies (3) by not reproducing a substantial portion of the work and (4) by, quite possibly, increasing the demand for the work when users desire to seek out a copy to actually read/study.

Re:Copyright Law

[Eustace Tilley]

Opt-out is correct, and generous. Libraries have special privileges under copyright; Google is providing an archival service to the libraries for the libraries' own lawfully-held books. Authors cannot opt-out of the lending library system.

Re:Copyright Law

[DaoudaW]

What TFA does mention, but kind of glosses over, is that copyright holders have to opt-out of having their works marked as 'not copyrighted'. It seems that Google is being a little disingenuous.

IANAL, but have done some research into copyright law. Copyright exists not only to protect the author/publisher, but also to provide legal access to information. By copyrighting a book, the publisher has agreed to allow fair use of the material. Google is allowing opt-out as a courtesy to publishers, not through any legal obligation.

Re:Copyright Law

[spuke4000]

Perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about here, but my understanding was there were limits on what one could do with library books. For instance, I didn't think you could photocopy the entire thing. Likewise, my understanding is that a private citizen couldn't scan a copyrighted book and put it on the internet without the author's express permission. That's exactly what Google is doing. They are assuming permission to put scanned copyrighted material online, and only applying the normal copyright protections (like only showing short passages) if the author/copyright holder opts-in.

Re:Copyright Law

[spuke4000]

Interesting. I interpreted the article differntly, but I stand corrected.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is not absolute. If I write a story and publish it with a banner that says "You may not copy any of this at all", you can ignore that. The fair use doctrine says, essentially, that as long as my use of the material doesn't negatively impact the copyright owner's use in a commercially significant way, I don't infringe.

In general, as long as your use of the material is different from the copyright owner's, you are free to use it. Making a parody, making a sculpture from AOL CDs, etc., are fair use because the new work is different from the original.

You can take excerpts of otherwise restricted material, as long as the excerpt is small in relation to the overall original.

Whether someone qualifies as a "library" or an "archive" or not depends on their use of the material. Libraries and archives get a pass to use things because they serve the public good, rather than their own. If Google's archive depresses sales of the works in question, they
are guilty of copyright infringement.

Reviewers and news reporters (and bloggers) can use restricted material with more latitude than others.

You have more latitude if you are using the work non-commercially, less if you use it commercially.

You can *always* use a work to compare its copyright status with other works. In other words, you can't claim copyright on something similar to other stuff and expect no challenges.

You have more latitude if your use of the work isn't a "spoiler" for the original. For instance, publishing the most interesting chapter of a Harry Potter book would probably infringe, but publishing the table of contents for something hardly ever would.

Finally, if your use of the work precludes the original author from making a similar use of it, you probably are out of bounds. Those cases are rare, like making a movie out of a book or a computer game from a movie. Usually there is another flaw in the use. The main thing here is you can't be in direct competition with the copyright holder.

But each copyright case is considered unique, which can make case law difficult to use in arguing a case or knowing how a judge will decide. There are a few important cases, but mostly it's the statutes and common law.

Re:Copyright Law

[StalinsNotDead]

Authors cannot opt-out of the lending library system.

Sure they can.

All they have to do go to every lending library in the world and check out the books they wrote. Then simply not return them.

Re:Copyright Law

[cpt kangarooski]

The examples don't mean anything. The four factor analysis is what is used to determine if a use is a fair use or not. It is possible to have news reporting, for example, that is not fair use, and cases along those lines are well known.

With regards to the four factors, you have to consider all of them, although fair use is not a simple matter of adding them up; they have differing weights depending on the circumstances involved.

Here, 1) the use is commercial and non-transformative, but does seem to have a significant research aspect to it. I'd call this one largely in favor of authors. 2) The works are both factual and creative, coming out solidly in favor of authors. 3) Google is copying the works in their entirety so as to have them in their database. That users might only see one small excerpt is irrelevant to the reproduction infringement; that's a distribution infringement. As everything is being copied, that's very bad. As for the distribution later, it is more likely that it will involve the important parts of the works than the unimportant parts. This too weighs heavily against Google. 4) It is utterly irrelevant whether a fair use has beneficial impacts on copyright holders; we're only interested in the harm involved. While it doesn't seem as though there would be a great deal of harm, alternatives that involve the copyright holders licensing these materials to Google are likely to be an issue that goes against this project, rather like Texaco.

All in all, I think this is dicey at best. It's certainly not a sure fair use.

Re:Copyright Law

[Eustace Tilley]

You appear to be mistaken. Google considers all books published since 1922 copyrighted. Excerpts, not whole works, of copyrighted works will appear with neither ads nor sales links. Copyright holders may opt in to ads and sales links and share revenue.

Re:Copyright Law

[3nd32]

no, they're applying normal copyright protections, like only showing short passages, to all copyrighted works. If the author opts in, they display up to a few pages. If the author opts out, they completely remove it.

Re:Copyright Law

[ReelOddeeo]

All they have to do go to every lending library in the world and check out the books they wrote. Then simply not return them.

Do you use a public library in a modern city?

You cannot check out material without a library card.

To get a library card, you provide some contact info, and agree to some basic conditions.

If you don't return a book, the library fines you. Eventually, they charge you for the book. I would imagine that at some point, a library takes some kind of collections action to recover their costs.

If an author checks out a book and keeps renewing it, the library msy simply obtain another copy. Alternately, the library, or another patron who wants the book could put it on reserve so that when the author tries to renew it, the library can collect it for the patron who has the book on reserve.

Re:Copyright Law

[lucky130]

As for (3), if they own a copy of the work or have permission from the author/copyright holder, then it's moot. It is then analagous to asking a friend, who owns a work, where in said work they saw some specific term or phrase and having them point it out to you and then telling you where you can find a copy of the book for sale (or rent, in the case of a library). In the case of (4), what about bad book reviews? They (probably) cause harm to the marketability of the work.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading the complaint, what the Authors Guild is saying is that in order for Google to provide this service, Google has to have an electronic copy of that book available for everyone to use. They are also saying that they did not authorize any scanning of their books by Google, and the fact that Google is scanning a library's collection with that library's permission is irrelevant.

FWIW, I think that what Google is doing is fair use, but unfortunately it will lose in court or be forced to put up only public domain works.

Re:Copyright Law

[EggyToast]

Exactly. The use of copyright is a benefit, and a priviledge. The benefit is that an individual can hold the rights to copying the works and being paid for the copies. The priviledge is that it's entirely a legal standing, and can change or be revoked through legal means.

So "fair use" isn't avoidable -- it's part of the entire package. If you want to use the restrictions of copyright on your works, you need to allow for fair use of your works as well. You can't pick and choose.

Re:Copyright Law

[chadjg]

If the recording industries can impose fees, however small, for the ephemeral copies created in a server for a webcast, why not charge Google, a for-profit company, for the ephemeral copies it makes?

Firstly, their copies are probably stuck on a hard drive of some kind, and are most certainly not all that ephemeral.

Secondly, just because Google isn't likely to make any money directly from this project doesn't mean that it the copies of the book in their database aren't contributing to the bottom line. Good will, dragging scholars to your site, and general coolness are worth something.

Thirdly, many books have an express prohibition on electronic storage of any kind right on the inside front cover.

The Section 107 list probably means more to a lawyer than it does to me, but as I see it, Google strikes out on almost all of the points.

1. Google exists to make their share holders money, and any activities must be assumed to have something to do with that. Therefore the purpose of the use is profit.

2. I'm not sure what "the nature of the copyrighted work;" means, but it seems to me that a print heavy book has all it's value in the text.
The only real analog to sticking thumbnails of a picture heavy web site, an court approved fair use thing, would be to paraphrase or write a commentary on the text.

3. Google is going to store all of the book's text. What they are doing is no different thangoing to a college book store, photocopying the text and then only puttign small bits of the text in the term papers. The citations are appropriate, but making your own copy isn't. That doesn't mean that everybody doesn't do it, but that's a different problem.

4. Forcing an author into an opt-out scheme in order to preserve their chances at selling the rights to another search engine is crap. Opt out sucks.

It's probably obvious that I'm neither a published author or a law scholar, but that's how I see it. If I was an author I'd probably drive an electronic copy of all my works down to Google HQ myself, but I'd like it to be my choice.

Re:Copyright Law

[cpt kangarooski]

First, permission from the copyright holder always means that there is no infringement, at least within the boundaries of the permission.

Second, your analogy doesn't hold up. We're talking about making a copy, not discussing facts about a copy, or pointing something out within a lawfully made copy. Your analogy doesn't involve a prima facie infringement to begin with.

Third, while book reviews may harm the value of the work, the issue is more along the lines of whether the use in question would serve as a substitute for the work. Here, if the copyright holders have a program where they license people to copy the work and put it in a database, Google's project of copying it themselves without license serves as a substitute.

Remember, creating the database is an infringement on its own, apart from letting people use it. So it needs to be defended against specifically.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

This is cool. The exact same article at +5 twice in the same discussion, posted by the same person. Mods, the "redundant" option is there for a reason...

Re:Copyright Law

[carlos_benj]

Do you use a public library in a modern city?

You cannot check out material without a library card.

Pssst. I think it was intended to be humorous. Obtaining a library card and avoiding fines would be trivial compared to the logistics of visiting every library....

Re:Copyright Law

[Ariven]

"If you don't return a book, the library fines you. Eventually, they charge you for the book. I would imagine that at some point, a library takes some kind of collections action to recover their costs"

Yup, I have seen a Sheriff sent to someones door with a subpoena over overdue library books.. with the basic message of "return the books or pay what we deem their cost to replace"

Re:Copyright Law

[NexusTw1n]

so only a small fraction of a book (or a small fraction of a few pages) will be shown by Google. This is similar to a snippet for a review.

The problem is, in order to show you that snippet, they are storing the entire book on one of their hard drives. A review only contains a few paragraphs of a book, google quotes the entire thing but hides most of it, until you ask for it.

Quoting an entire book is not fair use.

I think it should be an opt-in system, no?

Indeed. I'm going to use your work without permission in a commercial business for selling ads, until you tell me not to.

That isn't ethical.

For over a decade people on the net have complained about having to opt out rather than in. Whether it is spam, realplayer taking control of your .mp3 extension, or some unwanted little app included in the installer for some unrelated program.

But now we're being told it is OK to have to opt out of someone using your work for commercial gain without permission, and it's OK to bundle a toolbar in with an unrelated VPN client.

Google are the new billionare bully on the block. Amazon are doing equally cool things with book searchs, only are doing them with the author's permission, why can't google be as equally professionally courteous?

Re:Copyright Law

[erroneus]

I love your argument. I wonder how we can apply this argument to force the hands of the **AA into complying with public demand? Should we (the EFF or some other consumer advocate group) file some sort of class action demanding that THEY, the copyright protection-device people, provide a means to circumvent their protection measures so that our fair use rights are preserved? This should be a fair compromise since, under your argument, they should have their privileges REVOKED based on their prevention of the exercise of our rights under the law! (So either give us a means to circumvent protections or face having your copyright revoked would be the demand.)

Even the DMCA permits 'fair use' while denying the ability to create devices for circumvention so it seems only logical that the controllers of the protection/prevention devices should also provide access to the material.

There's lots of wriggle room in all of this... so I think the circumvention they provide should be 100% free as part of the demand.

Re:Copyright Law

[the phantom]

First off, while it is used as such in casual speech, 'copyright' is not a verb in the legal sense. You cannot copyright something. Copyright is a noun. It is something you own. Like physical objects, copyrights can be bought and sold.

Second, you do not have to do anything to own copyright on something you create. From the moment you create an original work, you own the copyright for that work. If you do not register your copyright, it might be harder to defend it, but you still own that copyright. So, publishers do not agree to provide copies for fair use -- they are forced to do so in much the same way that you are forced to pay taxes or not kill your neighbor.

On the last point, however, we have a common understanding. If it is ruled that Google's use is fair (which is the crux of the issue), then Google is under no obligation to allow for opt-outs. It would be done as a courtesy to keep the peace, but they wouldn't have to do it. On the other hand, it may help their case -- I am not quite sure how copyright works, but in the case of trademarks, you lose your trademark if you do not actively defend it. By providing a simple way to protect one's copyright, Google may be creating something of an escape clause for themselves.

Re:Copyright Law

[yfarren]

Actually, my understanding of what Google is claiming:
A. Under Fair Use, we have the right to display exerpts of ANY book, copyright or no.

If they dont copy the whole book, but rather, store the book as an index, they are on (from my little understanding of the law) fairly solid ground here. If they store the book, in a serially readable fasion, they might have some greater issues with the scanning. But if they never actually store the book in a serially readable manner, and merely make trees out of the book, they really dont need an authors permission at all.

IANAL but Google scanning and indexing of the books has some case law behind it, as being leagle, also. If you read the linked article (http://www.policybandwidth.com/doc/googleprint.pd f)
you will see an argument that the storing of the books, totally, with the use of only providing exerpts of the book is also leagle.

So what google is saying is "look, I can do this one way or the other, with out without your permission. However, if you REALLY dont want to be included, then hey, no big deal, I will respect your wishes. I dont have to, but I like being polite."

So Google basically it doesnt have to be opt in or out. But Google is being polite in letting you opt out.

It is interesting to me that on slashdot people are so "Screw the man" when it comes to the RIAA defending itself from people copying copyrighted works. But they feel that a corporation should not be able to use principles of fair use. Consider the priciples, not who is invoking them.

Re:Copyright Law

[no_opinion]

Here's why it won't fall under fair use - the law looks at how much of the original work is copied: "amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole". Google is digitizing the whole book even though they are only displaying excerpts. It's going to be hard to argue that fair use allows them to copy the WHOLE book.

Re:Copyright Law

[carlos_benj]

Yup, I have seen a Sheriff sent to someones door with a subpoena over overdue library books..

I think I saw that episode of COPS! Man, they chased the bookworm over the fences, guns drawn, "GET ON THE GROUND!" they kept yellin'. Intense stuff. Took the dude's library card on the spot and shredded it too.

Re:Copyright Law

[Martin Blank]

If you do not register your copyright, it might be harder to defend it, but you still own that copyright.

You are also more limited in the damages that you can sue for under copyright law. Use of an unregistered copyright can be pursued for (IIRC) actual damages only, whereas a registered copyright can be pursued for treble damages.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think google's implementation of this project very clearly falls under scholarship and/or research purposes."

Holy *!@$#%, how in the world did you arrive at that???! Pray tell what you would consider commercial or non-commercial then if you think Google Print is non-commercial:

Google is a publicly traded for-profit company. They are NOT an educational/academic/research institute or group.

Now, they can be a commerical entity and still have fair use apply, so we have to also look at HOW they use the copyrighted material. They will be selling ads and links on the search pages and search terms of Google Print. This makes the activity blatently commercial and for-profit.

This is not research activity, but in an intended end product of theirs. It certainly isn't scholarly, unless they publish papers on their search terms, and even then, fair use only extends to the very limited scope to produce the data of those papers.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if this will be of great use to students; the court case will be focused on Google, not the intended use or scope of the use. If Google is found infringing, end of story.

I have no love of the Author's Guild here (see past stories with their anti-used book sales on Amazon). In the past, the Author's Guild had positions that were against the letter of copyright law. On this issue, however, they're on point.

Google's in for a rude awakening--it doesn't matter much anymore if it's in line with the principles of copyright. Legislative history and the intent of the law nearly always takes a back seat to the letter of the law. There is case law and black letter law (e.g. derived works, reserved rights of the copyright holder) that shows Google will get smacked on this.

The real scary thing to me is how arrogant Google is coming off here. You have to ask for permission of the authors first, not the other way around. I have no clue who gave them such advice they could do an opt-out with the works. What would be technologically or conveniently great for end users is not the criteria to determine whether something is legal or not.

If I were a well-published author or a publishing house, I'd just sit and wait for Google to scan the books in and put them up, then nail them with multiple copyright infringements suits. ka-ching At the very least, copyright lawyers are foaming at the mouth, keeping silent until the day Google puts up their client's works. 3 searches = constructed verbatim paragraph = lawsuit

Re:Copyright Law

[morgajel]

Food for thought- if the RIAA does not allow fair use, through encryption and copy protection, does that mean it's no longer covered by copyright?

wouldn't that be a kick to the jimmy?

Re:Copyright Law

[justin12345]

I think you are missing the joke here, but you are right.

A guy I work with has otherwise spottless credit, but he was almost turned down for an apartment based on his credit report. He got a copy of his credit report and it turned out he had checked out a bunch of books from the city library during his sophmore year of school and never returned them. The library had filed with a collection agency to recover the lost $300 some dollars worth of property (and possibly fines, I don't remember), it totally screwed his credit score.

Re:Copyright Law

[budgenator]

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
(I would suggest that indexing, is a form of research, the law also considers the following)
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (note the law does not say it must be non-commercial)

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (they are books)

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (showing less than a page out of a book)

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
(google
  scans for free,
  indexes for free,
  links to the publishers website for free,
  pays commisions to the rights holder for clicks on competitor's ads for free,
google makes many books that would otherwise not be noticed findable so they are increasing the market, and all the free services provided by google definately increase the value significantly)

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Google stated mission is to make a "significant portion of the world's knowlege available to a signicant portion of the world's population"
and they seem to be doing this with religious zeal while presenting everybody a win-win situation.
If Google is screwing the copyright owners by doing all this, I wish they would screw me too!

Re:Copyright Law

[mollymoo]

I think google's implementation of this project very clearly falls under scholarship and/or research purposes.

What Google are doing is not research. The fact that you may be able to use Google's service for research is irrelevant becuase that's not why the service exists. If this was just to test out some new algorithm then perhaps it could be considered research. Google is a for-profit corporation and they intend to use the copyright works to make money by drawing people to their site and serving them ads. They aren't doing it to further the sum of human knowledge, they are doing it to get rich.

Re:Copyright Law

[sparkz]

Google are copying the books without the copyright owner's permission, AFAICT from the information provided. That is breach of copyright.

Re:Copyright Law

[Bun]

Likewise, my understanding is that a private citizen couldn't scan a copyrighted book and put it on the internet without the author's express permission. That's exactly what Google is doing.

No, that is NOT what Google is doing. From the referenced link:

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). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries.

You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that this certainly falls within Fair Use under U.S. copyright law.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

You're incorrect.

Google's opt-out is not a courtesy to publishers, it IS a legal obligation. In fact, Google is legally obligated to request publishers to opt-in, since their search engine does not fall under the fair use doctrine, unless they drop the context-sensitive text ads they love so much.
Since the ads are displayed based on the context of the search and results, Google is explictly using the copyright material for its own commercial gain; fair usage does not apply to commercial usages of copyrighted material.

This could all easily be solved by Google just asking the authors and publishers for permission, which they're likely to give if they're asked.
It's kind of like entering somehow's house to clean up their kitchen (an analogy brought up in the previous Google post). Without the homeowner's permission, they're going to get freaked out or mad, maybe even call the police. But if you ask them first, it's not likely that they're going to turn you down.

Re:Copyright Law

[ScrewMaster]

Well, if Google's use of the material falls under fair-use provisions, then they are, in fact, not copying them without the copyright owner's permission. The owner already gave permission for fair-use when the work was copyrighted. And that is the crux of this matter: is Google exercising fair-use rights. I think they are, I hope they are (because this would be a way-cool service that will probably make publishers a ton of money) but given the way this society works it will most likely end up being up to the courts to figure it out.

Re:Copyright Law

[EggyToast]

You don't need an owner's permission for fair use. That's the whole point of fair use. That it's "fair to use the works without the copyright holder's permission."

Re:Copyright Law

[sdmath]

Kinda like that episode of "Seinfeld," huh?

Re:Copyright Law

[jdgeorge]

What Google are doing is not research. The fact that you may be able to use Google's service for research is irrelevant becuase that's not why the service exists.

Google is indeed doing research on behalf of its users (the people who enter the search criteria) as surely as a University professor may indeed be doing research on behalf of a government organization or company that provides the criteria for grant that funds the research. The reason for the University professor's existence, while arguably an interesting philosophical question, has no bearing upon whether we call his work for hire, such as work funded by grants,"research".

They aren't doing it to further the sum of human knowledge, they are doing it to get rich.

This does not, in any way, conflict with the copyright laws of the United States of America. It is of absolutely no consequence to the law whether someone's intented result of doing research that makes fair use of a copyrighted work is "to further the sum of human knowledge" or to be the wealthiest fool in North America.

Re:Copyright Law

[kurzweilfreak]

If Google is screwing the copyright owners by doing all this, I wish they would screw me too!

That's almost too sig-alicious to pass up. :P

Re:Copyright Law

[mollymoo]

They aren't doing it to further the sum of human knowledge, they are doing it to get rich.

This does not, in any way, conflict with the copyright laws of the United States of America. It is of absolutely no consequence to the law whether someone's intented result of doing research that makes fair use of a copyrighted work is "to further the sum of human knowledge" or to be the wealthiest fool in North America.

17 USC, Section 107:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (my emphasis)

I think I was wrong earlier to suggest that Google might be able to argue that provision if their research was pure research. I doubt you could argue anything Google does is 'for nonprofit educational purposes'.

Re:Copyright Law

[LuYu]

Here is the question I cannot get around:

• Can Google copy whole books onto their storage systems legally?

It would appear that they cannot. However, nowadays most copyright infingement claims have to do with distribution and not copying. On the Internet, this is especially true since copies are required for transmission and display. Every website you view, for instance, is copied by several ISPs as it gets to you. Also, the RIAA does not seem to sue people for having songs on their hard drive. They tend to sue people for allowing other people to access those songs on their hard drives.

Given all that, I think the real question is:

• Are the copying portions of copyright law still enforceable in the age of the Internet? (Or is copyright now limited to distribution only?)

If the answer is yes, Google will lose. If the answer is no, everybody will win.

Re:Copyright Law

[Baricom]

Correct, so the question that needs to be answered is whether what they're doing falls under fair use or not. I tend to feel that Google is crossing the line here, even though it would be an undeniably cool service and probably result in the publishers making more money.

The way I read copyright law, I think even a web spider falls outside the realm of fair use - especially if the search engine is keeping a verbatim copy of the page which is served on demand. I think if somebody actually sued and the judges were completely impartial, Google would lose. The ease and cost-effectiveness of being able to remove something from Google's index is what's saving them from such a doomsday lawsuit.

Re:Copyright Law

[Eustace Tilley]

Technically speaking, Google is not copying the books, it is creating an encoding which allows the contents of the books to be retrieved.

Re:Copyright Law

[Anonymous Coward]

"(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (note the law does not say it must be non-commercial)"

No, but it does say non-profit.
Non-commercial != non-profit; hence the inclusion of both words.

Re:Copyright Law

[Rip!ey]

I think google's implementation of this project very clearly falls under scholarship and/or research purposes.

Wouldn't it be the person actually doing the research who is granted permissions under the provisions of fair use? This is required for them to use excerpts of copyright works in presenting the results of their research.

Google is not scanning books for research. They are not presenting results derived from research. They are doing it to provide a tool to those are, for commercial gain.

This is no different...

[gr0kCalvin]

No different that cataloging the internet...which they also did without the copyright owners consent.

Re:This is no different...

[TedCheshireAcad]

This is the fundamental purpose of robots.txt, which Google respects.

Re:This is no different...

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Correct me if I'm wrong- but wouldn't cataloging the internet be more akin to google telling you, if you are looking for a book on "x", which library has books on "x." Google isn't hosting every page in the internet.... When you click on a link from a google search, they send you to the actual site....

Re:This is no different...

[jeffvoigt]

This is no different than cataloging the internet...which they also did without the copyright owners consent.

I disagree.

It is my belief that Google won the internet copyright lawsuits because none of the people they infringed on could demonstrate monetary damages resulting from the use. If anything, it seems like courts deem duplications as "fair use" if no harm comes to the copyright holder.

However, I believe publishers could easily demonstrate that this practice "harms" their company by infringing on its copyrights. Sampling excerpts from books is one thing, but my understanding is that Google is siphoning entire books to be searched. I believe it will be difficult for Google to prove that this will not harm the publishing industry. As such, I believe the publishers will win this fight.

Re:This is no different...

[gunpowda]

Yes, but Google also caches the pages.

Re:This is no different...

[Xarius]

But the search results show a snippet of text from the page as the description, which is basically what this is doing.

Re:This is no different...

[terrymr]

But they're not going to be distributing the text of the book ... just allowing you to find out which books contain the terms you're looking for, along with a brief excerpt like they do for websites.

Re:This is no different...

[davecb]

This is also no different from Safari.

O'Reilly and friends index their books and provide a search service which shows you excerpts.

If you search for "full text indexing" at Safari you'll get a list of books discussing indexing, and the first item in the menus is an excerpt from a page on full-text indexing in Que's Special Edition Using Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server.

You can buy the book or just pay to read it online, your choice.

--dave

Re:This is no different...

[curious.corn]

robots.txt is the commonly agreed, conventional "no trespassing" warning sign for internet search bots. Pretending to grep for copyright notes is insane and treacherous (a là litigious bastard)... you sir are a Flamebait.

Re:This is no different...

[yfarren]

Robots.txt is a Courtesy. Much like the The Opt Out. Google is claiming that indexing is fair use. They will remove you from the index, if you ask, not because they are REQUIRED to, but because, you asked. There is a case law supporting the Notion that an Index, even a complete Index, is still within the scope of fair use.

Re:This is no different...

[Halfbaked Plan]

wget can be configured to ignore robots.txt

(in .wgetrc but not on the command line)

Re:This is no different...

[Anonymous Coward]

And like with robots.txt, Google offers publishers the ability to opt out of this scheme too.

Re:This is no different...

[julesh]

And like with robots.txt, Google offers publishers the ability to opt out of this scheme too.

What have the publishers to do with this? The copyrights of most books are held by their authors, not their publishers.

Re:This is no different...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your copyright isn't threatned by this any more than it is by someone reading the back cover of your book, though. Google isn't suggesting giving reader the actual text of your book or anything even remotely close to it. They're finding books that match your criteria and at worst showing a few words from it. No more or less than if I flip through it at a book store or if a friend tells me what it's about.

"Moby Dick. Captain ahab, a veteran of the sea, and his crew follow the notorious whale moby dick as seen through the eyes of Ishmael, his newest crew member. Excerpt: 'All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever present perils of life.'"

Did I just violate any copyright or give away moby dick? or do you think you still need to readt it to get the jist?

Go read what google has to say about the project. I think most people are demonizing it form a position of ignorance.

Re:This is no different...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I just pulled a few dozen books of the shelves here. Various topics, various time periods, various sizes. It seems to be a 50/50 split between copyright held by the author and copyright held by the publisher. A significant trend with the books that are copyrighted by the author is that they tend to be written by the type of person who is likely to drive the publishing process themselves.

Do you have any evidence to back up your assertion?

Re:This is no different...

[julesh]

Yes. For instance, note that the organisation that has issued these claims in an association of authors, not publishers. Also, read any book on the subject aimed at authors. "An Author's Guide To Publishing" by Michael Legat states: "Unless there are very special reasons for doing so, you should never surrender the copyright in your work, but instead you should grant your publisher a licence to publish"; every other book I have seen on the subject contains something similar.

Also, consider the fact that most books that are published in more than one country are handled by a different publisher in each of those countries. Also, paperback issues are frequently published by a different publisher to the hardback version. If the publisher held copyright, this kind of arrangement would be next-to-impossible.

Also, all of the authors I know through online forums (and there are a few of them) hold copyright in their own books. None of them are self published. These people are published by companies such as Baen, Random House, Tor, Bantam, Hodder & Stoughton and other well known publishers. If you look at the statistics, you'll find that almost all of the books sold in the English-speaking world are produced by these companies and a very small number of others.

Looking at the books I have here, the only counterexamples I can find are textbooks and reference books, and media tie-in novels.

new product

[TedCheshireAcad]

I'm just waiting for Google to release Suegle.

Enter the name of the person/company you want to sue and click "Sue". We'll e-mail the court date to you, along with relevant precedent to your GMail account!

Re:new product

[borawjm]

Suegle results for "Google":

Sorry, nothing for you to see here.

Re:new product

[LiquidCoooled]

You forgot to include the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button which along with your credit card details automatically either credits or debits your account.

Its like gambling, only much less evil!

Re:new product

[bhsx]

I had a hard time pronouncing Suegle until you put it in context. Then I spewed. Thanks.

Re:new product

[Kent Recal]

Take care with the "I'm feeling lucky!" button though.
You might be hitting IBM...

So, what's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone please explain why Google Print isn't a good thing?

omg...

[msh104]

3rd google article in two days...
a well, if you ask me there is nothing wrong with the way google does this. they do not make the entire book availible, only very small parts of it. and if I remember right, amazon has been doing the same thing too for quite some time.. they just didn't have a search engine to search through ALL the books.. you could only search in one.

Re:omg...

[zaphod_es]

if I remember right, amazon has been doing the same thing too for quite some time.

And I guess that Amazon will be next on their hit list. Lawsuits nowadays seem to be less about righting an injustice than harrassing a target with deep pockets. Settling for a few tens of millions is an attractive proposition compared with spending years fighting and winning a suit.
They would never bother to sue me!

Re:omg...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I can see that might be wrong is that Google has made a copy of the book without permission. If Google were to pay for the copy of the book they possess then I'd see no problem.

The daily insight

[chris_eineke]

If slashdot can make money off posting dupes, why can't dupes make money off posting on slashdot? ;}

Re:The daily insight

[elbenito69]

If slashdot can make money off posting dupes, why can't dupes make money off posting on slashdot? ;}

Simple. Because this isn't Soviet Russia.

Re:The daily insight

[nacturation]

If slashdot can make money off posting dupes, why can't dupes make money off posting on slashdot? ;}

That's what happens on slashdot.ru

Re:The daily insight

[msh104]

technically this is not a dupe, it's a follow up. that is it is the third in a very short time doesn't make it a dupe... but you might say it is annoying non the less.

Re:The daily insight

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean "slashdot.cccp" ?

Re:The daily insight

[Anonymous Coward]

A Soviet Russia joke that is actually funny -- I thought I'd never see the day. Kudos to you, sir. Although it was obviously in coming after that perfect intro by the parent poster, the "slashdot.ru" part brought the final touch.

Re:The daily insight

[XnR'rn]

Um, slashdot.su? :-P

my.mp3.com

[interiot]

Does this relate to the my.mp3.com case at all?

If I remember correctly, mp3.com was found to be guilty of making internal copies of all the CD's they touched. Isn't Google doing the same thing, eg. making a massive amount of copies of the books they touch? Insofar as it isn't legal for other corporations to put entire books through the photocopy machine, or use a single copy of software across all computers (without a corporate license)?

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

They are copying the text into a database, and running a query against the database. The result is that they do not disperse any copies to users. They don't create another copy when you perform a search against that database.

In the case of mp3.com, they were supplying a copy of music that wasn't taken from your purchased copy. In effect, they were giving you a copy of different music than what you purchased. That would be disallowed as copyright infringement.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Tyler Eaves]

I doubt this will really go like that. A rather key difference IMO is that Google is only showing small excerpts of text, not the entire work.

Re:my.mp3.com

[maxxdogg]

I posted about this later on in the thread....But I believe MP3.com was found to violate copyright not because it had given out MP3's....it was because of the original ripping of the CD into their own database. Just that act is a violation of copyright. Google may be having some serious issues if this precedent is applied to them.

Re:my.mp3.com

[interiot]

Okay, time to dig into the case more I guess. UMG RECORDINGS, INC. v. MP3.COM, INC.

It's language like this in the opinion that makes me think the problem was more with internal copying than with external copying:

To make good on this offer, defendant purchased tens of thousands of popular CDs in which plaintiffs held the copyrights, and, without authorization, copied their recordings onto its computer servers so as to be able to replay the [*3] recordings for its subscribers.

In the case of mp3.com, they were supplying a copy of music that wasn't taken from your purchased copy.

Right, but even the initial internal copy, I think, was ruled to not fall within the rights of fair use. (though the external copies were also a problem too)

Especially regarding the arguments, I think more focus was on the total number of CD's ripped, not on the total number of mp3's sent to individuals.

Re:my.mp3.com

[interiot]

That's what Google is doing externally. Internally, is it possible that the courts will see the initial act of copying the books into their computers as the same as running thousands of books through Google's photocopiers (which would be obviously illegal, if done to books in their entirety).

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

Take apart that mp3.com system into steps, and you'll see differences.

mp3.com: Put CD in drive, rip CD, transmit music to third party, 3rd party stores music, and retransmits music.

Google: Put book through scan/OCR, store content in own database, perform query against database.

The differences are the third party storage, and the retransmission of content. It's actually quite a large set of differences between mp3.com and Google.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it do you.

mp3.com did A+B+C+D
google is doing A+E+F+G

"A" was found to be illegal. Don't discuss the difference between B,C,D and E,F,G, it's irrelevent. Google is in trouble because of "A".

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

However, Google isn't retransmitting the content, nor are they storing someone else's copy of the content. They are creating a copy of their own content in their database, or aiding a party to copy the content that party owns into the 3rd party's database. Then they are setting up so that they can transmit a search query to that database. In the case of the library data, they aren't in possession of the content.

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

Google *isn't doing* 'A', that is the whole point. Since 'A' is possessing a third party's content, well, Google does not do this, so it is not relevent.

Google's method is precisely equal to me taking my books, me scanning them, me indexing them into my database, and then me putting a form on my web server so that you can search my books. I don't make you a copy of the book and I don't let you read the book.

There is very little similarity between the mp3.com case and this Google case, save for both being about copyright infringement.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Yes. Reproduction even without later distribution of the unlawfully made copies is an infringement.

If Google scans in this stuff to their database, that's going to get them in trouble right there, unless they have some sort of defense. It doesn't matter how much they show to users down the line (although that can also be infringing).

Re:my.mp3.com

[Jherek Carnelian]

That's what Google is doing externally. Internally, is it possible that the courts will see the initial act of copying the books into their computers as the same as running thousands of books through Google's photocopiers (which would be obviously illegal, if done to books in their entirety).

Not necessarily. In fact, they probably have to do the equivalent - scan the entire text of each book into their database. Otherwise they could not do full-text searches on the content of the books.

The difference here is the intent. mp3.com's intent in making those copies was to distribute the copies to customers who had purchased original copies. Google's intent is to build a searchable database - not to redistribute the contents of the database.

Law is super stupid about things like that, read this for a genearl treatise on such things: What Colour are your Bits?

Re:my.mp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be illegal for a library to copy its collection into a database. Therefore it is illegal for Google to do it on their behalf.

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

You say it would be, but I really doubt it would be. I believe many libraries already do this, to a varying extents, but that isn't relevent. If you really believe it's illegal, then please throw me a link to the appropriate section of law. I would certainly like to learn more about it, either way.

Re:my.mp3.com

[GeneralEmergency]

No.

The act of making the copy is lawful when the utlilization of the copy falls within the parameters of the "Fair Use Doctrine". See Section 107, Title 17, U.S. Code.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Lawyer, but I try cases in my dreams at night.

Re:my.mp3.com

[interiot]

Where do you get that my.mp3.com was about intent at all? Read the decision. Which part of the 4-part fair-use exemptions are different between my.mp3.com and google?

First factor -- "the purpose and character of the use". The use is commercial. Same with my.mp3.com, even if they don't charge a fee, it's still commercial.

Google doesn't add no new "new aesthetics, new insights and understandings" to the original music recordings it copies.

Second factor -- "the nature of the copyrighted work" -- the creative recordings here being copied are "close[] to the core of intended copyright protection". Okay, the copied-in-their-entirety is only happening internally to Google in this case, that's the biggest difference between my.mp3.com and google, but AFAIK, the internal copying alone is enough to be declared illegal.

Regarding the third factor -- "the amount and substantiality of the portion [of the copyrighted work] use [by the copier] in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" -- it is undisputed that defendant copies, and replays, the entirety of the copyrighted works here in issue, thus again negating any claim of fair use.

Regarding the fourth factor -- "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" -- defendant's activities on their face invade plaintiffs' statutory right to license their copyrighted sound recordings to others for reproduction. (in that companies probably didn't give Google a license for many internal copies of each book)

Okay, IANAL, and half of this doesn't make sense to me. But the four items don't look to be any different for google.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Libraries do what? I would certainly like to learn more about it.

Libraries keep books on shelves. If a book is popular they order extra copies, they cannot simply house-bind a photocopy of their first book because of Copyright Law. Libraries never copy the books content.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Fallingcow]

It seems to me that it would be illegal for google to copy any books into the database that they do not own.

Like, say, library books.

Would it be legal for an individual to check out books from the library, scan/OCR them, then return them? Seems like it would be.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Of course, this means that you agree that the authors in question can make a prima facie case against Google. This puts Google on the defensive.

Fair use is certainly a possible defense, but it is far from clear that what Google is doing will fall within it. Personally, I think it is unlikely that Google can win.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Jherek Carnelian]

Where do you get that my.mp3.com was about intent at all? Read the decision. Which part of the 4-part fair-use exemptions are different between my.mp3.com and google?

The part about, "new aesthetics, new insights and understandings." Adding full-text search and cross-referencing can and does enable new insights and understandings.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Fallingcow]

Does that not apply only if they already own a copy of the work? Like, if they were buying all these books?

But they're not, right? They're getting them from libraries, mostly, as best I can tell.

So, I can borrow a book from a friend, that's legal. My friend can make copies and change format for his own fair use purposes, that's legal. I cannot, however, borrow the book and make copies for myself, unless I destroy the copies when I return the book, or hand them over to him with the book. Am I wrong on any of this?

Re:my.mp3.com

[terrymr]

Copying without distribution is not any kind of infringement that I've ever heard action being taken on. Even the RIAA won't sue you for copying CD's to your computer.

Re:my.mp3.com

[interiot]

Right, but that's still arguing about the external part. I don't know about the external copying.

But I think that the internal copying may be very similar to my.mp3.com, and that's not transformative at all... it's copying entire books into their database. (I don't think that sticking it in a database is transformative... it's not, in the words of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, a "creative metamorphosis", it's making it easier to index, but it's an artistic transformation)

Re:my.mp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you hung yourself with your own argument:

YOUR BOOKS. Google doesn't OWN the books in the first place, therefore, they are guilty of copyright infringement!

Re:my.mp3.com

[povvell]

Yes this is very much My.mp3.com territory. The similarities are (and IANAL): 1) Making copies is the infringement 2) Distributing the copies for commercial purposes aggravates the act. Fair use is not a defence. The differences are: 1) Google has no intention of serving the whole book to anyone (i.e. defendant DOES NOT 'copy and replay the entirety of the copyrighted works at issue'. 2) Google is not some weak kneed start up with chicken VC anxious to avoid poisoning the exit strategy. They won't cave in at the first trial if they lose. This one will go all the way, because it strikes at the heart of the future of search.

Re:my.mp3.com

[the phantom]

Yes, you are wrong. Think about doing research at a large university library. You borrow the books from the library (your friend), and make copies for fair use reasons. You then return the book. You are under no obligation to destroy your copies.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Sure. They don't really notice, and they don't especially care. That doesn't mean that they can't.

There have been numerous cases where the issue was decided as part of a larger effort (e.g. as the direct infringement on which an indirect infringement case was founded). And there have even been cases along these lines, such as Texaco.

If these copyright holders can use it to shut down this project, then don't think that they won't.

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

They certainly do make copies, and they do it exactly the way that Google is doing this. Hell, Google is aiding a bunch of libraries in their existing projects to digitize their collections. This has been going on for quite a few years. If you go to the Google Print page, you can catch links to various libraries and read about it first hand.

Nobody is making copies on demand, and I'm certainly not trying to say that it would be legal to do so.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Jherek Carnelian]

I don't think that sticking it in a database is transformative...

Then we disagree. As long as the act of "sticking it in a database" includes the building of indices and cross-references, then I say it is transformative - you can now do creative things that with it that were effectively impossible beforehand.

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

Sigh, go learn the english language better, along with some basic logic and reasoning skills.

My example does not preclude Google's process. I gave you an example that is very close to the matter at hand to dispute the insistance that such things would be illegal.

To clarify:

A = "making a duplicate of a third party's content"

Z = "making an index of a third party's content"

"duplicate != index", therefore "A != Z".

Google is doing the same procedural thing as they do with indexing web sites. The method of information access is the only difference. Since indexing of web sites was shown to be quite legal, and indexing of images was also shown to be quite legal, even court precedent would say that indexing books would be quite legal.

Do you also believe that Google is infringing on the copyright of nearly every web page on the internet? That argument has been tossed out of court quite handily.

Re:my.mp3.com

[SEE]

Google reads in copyrighted works, and then keeps the electronic copy in a database that no humans ever see. When somebody does a Google search, it pops up a small excerpt that is well within Fair Use guidelines, with information as to how the reader can get the full work on his own. Those who don't want their works indexed can tell Google so, and it will exclude their works from the database.

Now, did I just describe Google Print, Google News, or the original Google web search?

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

Your example would be making a duplicate of the book, and not an index of the book. Court precedent has already stated that indexing images of any type, and indexing web pages of any type, are both legal.

Regardless of whether Google or the library possess the database, precedent says that it is in accordance with the law.

BTW, your example would be illegal if they were simply creating a duplicate of the book. The point of contention is whether the indexing of a book is that same as the indexing of everything else.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Google reads in copyrighted works, and then keeps the electronic copy in a database that no humans ever see.

And it's this part that is infringing.

Now, did I just describe Google Print, Google News, or the original Google web search?

Of course, two of these can fall within the safe harbor of 512(b). One of these can't. If the books were already online, Google would have a far stronger case.

Re:my.mp3.com

[interiot]

Indexing it in a database isn't creating a new work that you can yourself copyright though... it's still the same original copyrighted work.

It's like ripping a CD into MP3... sure, now you can stick it on a password-protected server and listen to it from work, something you couldn't do with your CD, but the courts still said that doesn't fall under fair use, especially when it's done on a large scale for commercial purposes.

Re:my.mp3.com

[shimmin]

Libraries are now allowed to make copies of books when (1) The book is in its last 20 years of copyright protection; and (2) The copyright owner is no longer exploiting the copyright. Google Print may well be able to claim this safe harbor, but only for a limited domain of works. As for the rest, they have nothing but the fair use defense, and that defense is always far from certain.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

17 USC 106(1). Compare with 106(3). Definitions are at 101.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair use doesn't allow random excerpts regardless of how big said excerpt is. Fair use allows an excerpt of the necessary size to facilitate commentary. For example in a review or a discussion of the techniques used. Google doesn't include commentary, analysis or anything with their excerpts.

The purpose of Google's attempted inclusion of protected works is to increase the hit rate on their ads. You are more likely to use their service, thus more likely to see one of their ads, if you believe their database holds all published works rather than just a historical database of works prior to 1923.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

The problem, however, is that Z is inclusive of A. You can't have a full-text index without having a copy of the work within the index.

As for indexing of web sites, this has long fallen under a safe harbor that's inapplicable to the book project. One of the reasons the safe harbor was created, however, was the uncertain ground that numerous Internet companies found themselves on. They were not consistently winning cases.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Intent is not a factor. Copyright infringement is a strict liability offense -- even if you do it without meaning to, and with the best of motives, you are still liable. Intent can only play a role in damages, and perhaps whether the offense is criminal as well.

But kudos for citing to the essay.

Re:my.mp3.com

[sparkz]

Or to put it another way:

mp3.com: Rip CD, transmit to 3rd party, 3rd party stores music. What happens next is out of mp3.com's control (though probably still mp3.com's responsibility)

google.com: Scan and OCR a book, transmit to 3rd party, 3rd party stores book (in browser cache, if not explicitly saving to disk).

Not a world of difference, though it's probably fairer to compare with iTunes which also "gives away" 30-second snippets of songs, whilst Google (now) transmits snippets of books. Earlier, they tried a system using cookies to allow a user to read a limited number of pages per day.

Re:my.mp3.com

[copper]

After a quick read of UMG RECORDINGS, INC. v. MP3.COM, INC. it seems one of the key issues will be whether Google's infringement is protected under fair use. According to the court in UMG Recordings, four factors are considered:

1. "Pupose and character of the use"

While not on its face commercial (Google is not directly selling copies of the works), it is in furtherance of their commercial interests and presumeably will receive payment for redirecting potential buyers to various retailers. Google could argue that they are providing a public good by providing an index to the public but this seems quite shaky to me; Google could buttress their argument by showing that their indexing adds new "insights and understandings" to the original works.

2. "the nature of the copyrighted work"

I would think, especially for non-fiction books, Google is on stronger ground here since books are more "factual or descriptive" than music.

3. "The amount and substantiality of the portion used..."

Here Google is stuck. They are using the works in their entirety.

4. "the effect of the use upon the potential market"

Google can argue that they are only enhancing the existing market for sale of physical copies of the works and unlike my.mp3.com are not usurping a potential market from the copyright holders (unless there is a market for charging people to be able to search contents of a book). I suppose the copyright holder could argue that they are losing their ability to license their works to a search engine. Actually, I think that's a pretty strong argument.

I'd need to read more cases to see how courts balance these four factors but I believe Authors Guild has the stronger position, as far as fair use goes.

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

They need to do a better system of limiting access to the content, regardless of anything else. The snippets aren't a bad idea, though.

They also aren't transmitting the whole work to your browser, so you don't have the browser cache and related issues. They're just running a query and telling you which books match as a result; you don't do any transmission of works or copying for that. Then they provide the excerpts, which are definitely legal under Fair Use. I think your iTunes comparision is a *lot* more valid than this silly mp3.com one that people keep mentioning.

It seems that, mostly, people just keep confusing searching an index with sending the user a copy. Out of curiousity, besides the Guild lawsuit, where are you seeing that they're transmitting enough of the work to constitute infringement? That's contradictory to everything that I've dug up about Google Print...

Re:my.mp3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but that's not what happened with my.mp3.com. Matter of fact, if it had been, and they'd taken adequate measures to prevent widespread sharing using such accounts, then it would have probably been legal. Here's what actually happened:

mp3.com: Put CD in drive, transmit to third party enough metadata to identify the CD, 3rd party gives you MP3s from their own CDs based on said metadata

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

I came to the conclusion that they weren't the same as a result of the way that current search engine indexes are handled. So while you need to have the collected total of the content for a complete index, it seemed that it was a special case.

Why isn't that safe harbor applicable? It's the same intent, and largely the same process. Is there specific wording in one of the court precedents that clarifies where the safe harbor applies? I've been looking for something about it, but haven't found it yet.

I understand the Guild's point that the Google database would have to contain what amounted to a complete copy of the content. I have to admit that I'm not sure why they would be willing to risk losing all that potential revenue by jumping into a lawsuit. I'd understand if it were a trademark issue, but this?

If Google set up the libraries so that the library had the servers hosting the database, but allowed Google to run queries, that would seem to be perfectly legal. I suppose they could do that if things didn't work out well for them in court.

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

Thanks, I realized that I remembered that incorrectly a while after I posted, while doing more research. That certainly does make the mp3.com case a lot worse. The copy you received was technically a different work than what you purchased initially.

It's so frustrating... all of these things are good ideas, and cause no harm to the rights holders. What a bastardised system. :(

Re:my.mp3.com

[aaronl]

However, 17 USC 108 would exempt the libraries' use. Well, as long as there isn't something elsewhere that supersedes that.

That one doesn't really help in arguing for Google, as they couldn't argue that they get no direct or indirect commercial gain.

Re:my.mp3.com

[fferreres]

No, you don't yet it.

mp3.com's A was not found to be illegal, and google's A, too add to that, is different from mp3.com's A. mp3.com's A is clear, as anyone can rip a CD legally, like you do with iTunes or any other legal software.

And google's A, scanning the text of a book for internal use is not illegal either. And it's not illegal to be able to tell someone else, if some phrase is in certain book.

It's common sense. mp3.com problem was A+B+C+D+E, not A, o D+E. They didn't have rights to distribute music, they couldn't provide a "shared storage" service either.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Fallingcow]

You copy the *whole* book?

Also, it's for academic purposes, which gives one far more latitude than a publicly-traded company would have doing similar things. It doesn't matter that someone might use the database for research; google's not doing research, and are the one's doing the copying of entire works.

Re:my.mp3.com

[Fallingcow]

It'd be interesting if they were allowed to index *everything*. They'd be a modern day Library of Alexandria.

I'm betting that very comparison was made during whatever meeting at which the decision to do this was made.

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, the main reason why the 512(b) safe harbor is inapplicable here is at 512(b)(1)(A): the material that's being cached in the database has to be put online by someone other than the party doing the caching.

As for the Guild, what revenue? Google isn't paying them to engage in this project. If they were, maybe they wouldn't be suing them. While one could argue that there might be increased sales down the road that are attributable to what Google is doing, that sort of thing is often too nebulous and uncertain to convince rightsholders who would prefer to be paid now and get possible future benefits.

Finally, your point about libraries hosting the databases wouldn't change anything. While libraries have some additional exemptions that let them make copies, they're not broad enough to support anything like this. They're more along the lines of making a copy of a one-of-a-kind manuscript that's falling apart and is irreplacable.

Re:my.mp3.com

[julesh]

I believe you are misreading the emphasis in that sentence:

To make good on this offer, defendant purchased tens of thousands of popular CDs in which plaintiffs held the copyrights, and, without authorization, copied their recordings onto its computer servers so as to be able to replay the [*3] recordings for its subscribers.

I've not read the US Copyright laws for some time, but most modern such laws include a forbidden activity which is to "store copyright material in an information retrieval system without the permission of the rights holder", which is generally held to be equivalent to supplying the material to any end user who has access to that "information retrieval system". i.e., no downloading is necessary for an offence to be committed, merely placing the data on a publically accessible server.

Re:my.mp3.com

[powerg3]

Of course, two of these can fall within the safe harbor of 512(b). One of these can't. If the books were already online, Google would have a far stronger case.

512(b) seems to be specific to "system caching", probably intended for ISP caching HTTP proxies. How would it provide safe harbor for Google Web indexing?

Re:my.mp3.com

[cpt kangarooski]

Because if you read the actual text of 512(b), there's nothing in there that would allow one and disallow the other. The temporary storage requirement might, but there's no solid definition for what temporary means, and I expect that Google does update their database periodically.

I really don't understand

[Dragon Rojo]

They will get more exposure of their books and the service probably lift their sales, cant their greedy minds understand it?.

Re:I really don't understand

[Kaihaku]

It's not necessarily a reaction based on greed, I suspect that it is more one of fear. It takes the control out of their hands and into the hands of a third party, imagine if a google started releasing its own demos of Sierra's games. How about if google started releasing its own trailers for Pixar's movies? Personally, I think its a brillant idea and a good move but I still do understand the view of the other side.

Re:I really don't understand

[Guysmiley777]

Fear is the wrong reaction. I just ordered a book from ABE based on what I found using this feature.

The deciding factor between the three books I was considering (they are non-fiction reference books) was the content and layout. Using Google Print I was able to see how the books were layed out in the sample excerpts and I bought the best of the three. I suppose if you were a publisher releasing crap you would have reason for concern...

Re:I really don't understand

[Halfbaked Plan]

Or if, say, Microsoft started releasing it's own binary-only version of Linux.

Re:I really don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

The publishers lose control over marketing, by which they sell the SOS with a trendy new cover or buzzword title. The google way, content is king. Folks may even discover old out of copyright classics. No money to be made there.

New /. Gives me a nice one-inch left margin on my 2-iinch sidekick device. Damn!

And the anti-bot image runs off the screen|
0xC2 left my pw at home...

This is different

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that documents indexed when "cataloging the internet" were (presumably) put on the internet by the copyright owners.

In this case, Google is scanning books, then adding this content to the internet. The copyright owner has no involvement putting their content on the internet.

Re:This is different

[carlos_benj]

In this case, Google is scanning books, then adding this content to the internet.

Not exactly. Their scanning them in full but adding them to a searchable database. What a search reveals is a small excerpt containing the search string (or portions thereof). The only way the entire content would be made available this way is if the author repeated the search string in every sentence.

From the article linked from the blog

[op12]

The article Google's response points to a case that they are claiming set the precedent for search engine use of copyrighted material, including for commercial purposes:

The leading decision that considered the fair use issues relating to search engine operations is Kelly v. Arriba Soft, 336 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2003). Arriba Soft operated a search engine for Internet images. Arriba compiled a database of images by copying pictures from websites, without the express authorization of the website operators. Arriba reduced the full size images into thumbnails, which it stored in its database. In response to a user query, the Arriba search engine displayed responsive thumbnails. If a user clicked on one of the thumbnails, she was linked to the full size image on the original website from which the image had been copied. Kelly, a photographer, discovered that some of the photographs from his website were in the Arriba search database, and he sued for copyright infringement. The lower court found that Arriba's reproduction of the photographs was a fair use, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. With respect to the first factor, "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature," 17 U.S.C. 107(1), the Ninth Circuit acknowledged that Arriba operated its site for commercial purposes. However, Arriba's use of Kelly's images was more incidental and less exploitative in nature than more traditional types of commercial use. Arriba was neither using Kelly's images to directly promote its web site nor trying to profit by selling Kelly's images. Instead, Kelly's images were among thousands of images in Arriba's search engine database. Because the use of Kelly's images was not highly exploitative, the commercial nature of the use weighs only slightly against a finding of fair use.

Re:From the article linked from the blog

[op12]

Hate to reply to my own post, but I realize it is misleading (clarifications in bold):

The article linked in Google's response points to a case that they (the author of the article) are claiming set the precedent for search engine use of copyrighted material...

This is not a Google article. All Google says is: Here's an article by one of the many legal scholars who have weighed in on Google Print.

(Linked article is a PDF).

Industry groups are stupid

[TWX]

This is just another indication of stupid industry groups. It's not limited to commercial media, folks.

It seems like very time someone comes up with some cool thing that makes the consumer's life easier, the affected industry panicks and attempts to get the technology quashed. In this case I'd think that authors would want their material easily referenced in part, because they might actually sell copies if people need the information. Without something like this available, authors have more chance of remaining in obscurity or never having the chance to share their work with a larger audience.

Industry groups are just dumb.

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

From TFA..especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program

n this case I'd think that authors would want their material easily referenced in part, because they might actually sell copies if people need the information.

If I were Google, I would make it "Opt-In". Maybe even charge those guys. How's that for poetic justice.

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[aaronl]

It would be poetic justice, but unfortunately, I doubt these groups would opt-in, be it for free or otherwise. The only way to get this off the ground is to already have a massive database of content indexed.

With only opt-in, you would probably end up with only a small number of authors. Specifically, the ones that are contracted with small publishers, or that just publish online through ebooks. It would be like what mp3.com, and similar, looked like: no big names, but sometimes good content that you'd never heard of.

The publishers and authors would certainly make additional sales, considering Google is also placing links to various online retailers. You would go directly to the purchase page for that particular book!

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[gl4ss]

in part perhaps it's fair use but google indexes the books in full.

that means google makes full copies of the books into their own database for commercial use and as the excerpts are shown around the search results what does it take to read the entire book by crafting search queries? not much I'd think.

if it's ok for google to copy the books why is not ok for _everyone_ else to go to the library and just plain copy the books? or request a copy through mail or whatever?

google says through a proxy that **Under the Print Library Project, Google plans to scan into its search database
materials from the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford Universities, the University
of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. In response to search queries, users will
be able to browse the full text of public domain materials, but only a few sentences of
text around the search term in books still covered by copyright. This is a critical fact that
bears repeating: for books still under copyright users will be able to see only a few
sentences on either side of the search term. Users will not see a few pages, as under the
Publisher Program, nor the full text, as for public domain works. Indeed, a full page of
the book is never seen for an in-copyright book scanned as part of the Library Project
unless a publisher decides to transfer their book into their Publisher Program account, in
which case it would be under the agreement between Google and the copyright holder.
*****

why do you think google didn't start with harry potter or a similar best seller? because they would have been slaughtered in court, and for them to be able to do it legitly on all other books they should have been able to have done the scan-and-put-on-the-net for everyone else. if you can read a few senteces(in the stuff currently on google print it's more like 4 pages) forward you know what you need your next search term to be to get a little further(or automate the whole process).

obiviously google intends to pretend that you can't access the whole book through google print but then again you can just make a new search and access an another bit. i wonder if a newspaper could run harry potter 1 page at a time through the year and get away with it being "fair use" without paying anything for it, indeed not even buying the book?

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[wayne606]

Finding the full text of the book using that sort of chaining would be the simplest thing in the world for Google to disallow.

I think these industry groups are just afraid of innovation because they don't see where it will lead... Also once Google has the full text of every book in existence on-line, some third party might be able to steal the data and "liberate" it - that would definitely be bad for them.

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[ShadyG]

I don't know. I kind of enjoyed the "Got Milk?" ads.

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[Shelled]

Far from it. Industry groups have lobbied consistently to control all distribution of 'IP' since the Statute of Anne, and recently they've won by leaps and bounds. At stake for them is a lifetime, government guaranteed and enforced revenue stream, for the remaining 95% of society the open sharing of our common experience and culture. They're far from stupid. Irremediably evil perhaps but not stupid.

Re:Industry groups are stupid

[utexaspunk]

Finding the full text of the book using that sort of chaining would be the simplest thing in the world for Google to disallow

This is a bit over the top, and would require a seriously determined programmer, but someone might be crazy enough to do it: What if one wrote a distributed program for it? One machine retrieves the first 4 pages, determines a statistically significant phrase on the last page, and then hands it off to another machine, which repeats the process, etc.? Could google stop that?

amazon has permission; google does not

[Anonymous Coward]

> amazon has been doing the same thing too for quite some time.

Amazon does this with the participation of the publisher, and there are no excepts printed if the publisher objects.

Google turns this on its head and says publishers must opt out.

It's totally different.

Should be Opt-In procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

This is something that, in my opinion, should clearly be opt-in, not opt-out. Google makes you jump through some hoops to stop them from slurping your material. Why is the burden placed on the copyright holder? If Google wants the information, Google should do the work. Of course, the minor fiasco with opt-in with Google Video proves that Google isn't up to the task. They recognized their failing and instead of trying to correct it, they decided to reverse the direction to the disadvantage of copyright holders. I know you want to automate everything Google, but sometimes hiring a staff to do real work is necessary.

From Google, re: removing your book.
"If you're not a Google Print partner and want us to avoid your books, you'll need to provide us with a small amount of information about yourself as well as a list of the books you don't want in Google Print. Unless you specify otherwise, we'll use your information only to verify that you are indeed the copyright holder of that particular book."

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[xnderxnder]

I'm not familiar with the Google Video bit, but the rest definitely has merit. People slam the idea of opt-out in most every other arena - this is no different.. except that it's for the owners of copyrighted material.. those evil bastards. (snark)

Google, how about asking publishers for a list of books to scan?

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't need to. When you publish a book under copyright protection you have already given you permission for anyone to make "fair use" of the material (and google's use of the material appears to qualify as fair use).

If you want to use more restrictive licensing, print and sell the thing yourself requiring the purchaser to sign an NDA or contract.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[user317]

how about forcing libraries to ask each publisher/author if they can buy their book and lend it to people. as i recall my unversity library had a pretty extensive search system. although it mostly searched abstracts of papers/journals.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[ao_coder]

I can see your point, but I think the product resulting from opt-ins would be dramatically inferior to opt-outs. I'm afraid that we'd end up with the text equivalent of Itunes (which is completely unsatisfactory if you like 20th century music, old jazz, classical or world music). I agree that opt-in would be more comfortable to authors, but I think the social benefit from opt-out justifies that route. Especially in light of the proposed model which limits its' utility to being a research tool.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[DaoudaW]

If Google wants the information, Google should do the work.

Google _is_ doing the work. Hello! In the article yesterday, one publisher complained that publishers don't even necessarily know what books they've published, but Google is going through large collections, finding and notifying publishers, and scanning millions of books. Tell me again who's not doing the work.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[silentbozo]

Google, how about asking publishers for a list of books to scan?
 
Because to do so runs contrary to public access to information. There are many books that may, or may not be protected by copyright. If you only scan books that are currently owned and controlled by someone, then you restrict yourself to a very small subset of the available literature. Consider if libraries only stocked books that publishers allowed to be lent out.
 
Although there are issues related to the copying of books in order to provide Google's indexing feature, I would argue that needlessly deferring to publishers grants those publishers rights (ie, the right of approval to allow works to be indexed) that they do not, and should never have.
 
Remember folks, copyright is meant to allow public access to works - compensation of the rights holder is merely a carrot to accomplish that task (foster the creative arts), and is not the main reason that copyright exists.
 
I quote, from Clause 8, Section 8, of the US Constitution:
 
  Clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power] 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;
 
Google is providing a public service - indexing. To force them to pay (or spend money and time for rights clearances) in order to create another Library of Congress for indexing purposes, runs counter to the public interest, as Google would likely have to charge for access to their database in order to recoup costs, and pay the danegeld required by some rights holders for having a digital copy of their works. I would argue that Google's approach is a correct one - like a robots.txt file, assume that information is available for indexing, unless explicitly told that it is not for public consumption. Given that someone needs to do this (indexing), and we get positive side effects such as a digital backup of the work in question, in the event that all originals are lost, and the LOC doesn't have the money to do either preservation, or full-text indexing, I'm very much on Google's side on this one.
 
Having a Google index of every printed work would definitely help the "Progress of Science and useful Arts". Hampering their effort to do this would not.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[sribe]

This is something that, in my opinion, should clearly be opt-in, not opt-out.

You say that, but never justify it. So, I ask, why? And before you answer, consider a few points. Copyright does not grant an author total control over his work. He may not require that reviewers get permission to review, or even quote, his work. He may not require that bookstores get permission to advertise his work. He may not require that comedians get permission to parody his work. He may not require that college professors get permission to interpret and teach about his work. He may not require an online seller to get permission to list his book in a searchable database. What makes you so sure that he should be able to require google to get permission to index his work???

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

Statement from Google Public Relations Borg:

Resistance is futile author. All your words will be assimilated. Your words will join our words and further the collective knowledge.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my response before reading your "before you respond" thought. I think opt-in is better because you're only including those you know for certain want to be included, rather than including those who may have no idea and/or do not want in and then burdening them with the task of proving their identity to opt out of a service they never wanted to be a part of in the first place. I don't see how that's fair. What if 75 different companies crop up in the next year with the same idea as Google... now the copyright holder has to prove their identity to 75 companies to prevent them from using their works. It's just unncessarily messy.

Okay, now I read your point. The difference between this and reviews or advertising is the author doesn't have the right to opt-out of a professor using his material or a comedian from making a pun based on his title. Or does he?

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess. You've never read a book have you? Because,

I would argue that Google's approach is a correct one - like a robots.txt file, assume that information is available for indexing, unless explicitly told that it is not for public consumption.

Better than 99% of commercially published works already have the publishing equivalent of a robots.txt. It's call the copyright page and it's right at the front of the book. And it tells you who owns the copyright. They tell you when the work entered into copyright. All the information Google needs to secure permission is right there. Additionally, one example I have right here explicitly prohibits what Google is doing.

But apparently Google doesn't want to respect that robots.txt equivalent.

Having a Google index of every printed work would definitely help the "Progress of Science and useful Arts".

So what. Your own copy-n-paste from the constitution is pretty clear on what is supposed to happen there.

I mean, if you ask me, it'd be pretty good for the progress of science and useful arts for me to be able to fuck and impregnate every victoria's secret and lingerie model on the planet. Because I'm smart and they're pretty. So either the kids will be smarty pants rocket scientists or they will be hot slutty types who the smarty pants rocket scientist types will want to fuck and therefore will try and impress the aforementioned hot slutty types with their cleverness.

Oh, and slashdot is passed the stupid mark about twelve years ago.

Re:Should be Opt-In procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

And it tells you who owns the copyright. They tell you when the work entered into copyright. All the information Google needs to secure permission is right there.

Bullshit. It tells who owned the copyright when the book in question was published. Which, for 50 years old work, is almost certainly NOT who owns it today.

The Internet is free

[Wesley Felter]

But books are not.

Also, to be honest, times change. Because Web search engines existed before today's copyright madness, they've been effectively grandfathered in. Libraries are the same way; if they were invented today the Author's Guild would probably be lobbying against them.

Re:The Internet is free

[Jherek Carnelian]

Because Web search engines existed before today's copyright madness, they've been effectively grandfathered in.

LoL! Today's "copyright madness" began long before the web even existed. The public has been gradually losing its rights in the area for centuries.

Re:The Internet is free

[Gulthek]

More like decades, the public has barely even had these rights for centuries.

But yeah, copyright madness is pretty much what the history of copyright law is. Look up the HUGE debate about player pianos to for olde timeye versionse ofe mp3e debatese.

Re:The Internet is free

[southpolesammy]

Reading, viewing, or listening of various art forms can all be free is some cases, whether it's reading a book, looking at art in a museum, listening to music on the radio, or doing all of the above via the Internet.

Reproducing those works is another matter entirely, and is what begs the question here.

Re:The Internet is free

[Castar]

Libraries are the same way; if they were invented today the Author's Guild would probably be lobbying against them.

I actually read a quote by the head of a publisher's organization - she said that they would dearly love to go after libraries, but it wasn't a battle they could win, because libraries are seen as such a good thing. It would be like going after children's hospitals, or puppies, or something. I can't find the quote after a quick naive Google, but I think it was covered on Slashdot a while ago.

I wish they would go after libraries, because then people might realize what money-grubbing greedheads the various publishing businesses are.

Re:The Internet is free

[Petrushka]

I actually read a quote by the head of a publisher's organization - she said that they would dearly love to go after libraries, but it wasn't a battle they could win, ...

Really it's not clear to me why anyone thinks that Google should be liable in this case, rather than the libraries. After all, what is actually happening is that the libraries in question have effectively commissioned a third party (Google) to digitise and index the books on their behalf, and are then allowing Google access to the data. Here's Google's FAQ on the matter.

Surely it should be manifestly obvious that all responsibility in this matter rests on the libraries and not at all on the company they happen to have commissioned? If the act of supplying the data to Google is illegitimate, I find it hard to see how that's Google's fault.

In short it seems obvious to me that the Authors' Guild (or PIA, as it might become) is acting in grossly bad faith if they go after the accessory, rather than the actual culprit. Sure they can make a case that Google should remove all access to the data they have been given access to, but suing? Surely it's obvious Google is the wrong target.

Re:The Internet is free

[Anonymous Coward]

Libraries have always been under attack by publishers because they are a concrete example of how un-ownable intellectual works are. For instance, a library with only one copy of every book can serve a city of thousands of people, add a few copies of popular books and it can serve millions of people. When you put this on the Internet, which I'm sure Google has thought about, you could theoretically just do page level locking on a book so that as much of the library as possible could be checked out for as long as some person is reading it, and then checked back in when they're done. Google would probably only have to buy 3 or four copies of every book on earth, plus a few more popular ones, and the information distribution problem would be solved.

It's interesting to think about how authors would be paid in such a system. Supply and demand would dictate that books were simply worth a one time purchase fee that in some way related to the quality of the work, which probably corresponds closely to how long it took to be written, and publishers would be cut out of the middle. Rather, Google, or other online libraries would become publishers and broker one-time purchases from an author, and almost certainly make up the purchase price either with ads or government support. After all, if Google just spun this off as a separate non-profit organization, it would be open to serious funding by the Feds. If the LOC ever gets its act together it could simply do this job instead of Google, maybe Google could sell them the hardware and services to keep it running or something.

Re:The Internet is free

[Kulilin]

Oh, but they are!
Several Spanish and European author's associations have asked for a levy to be paid to them every time a public library lends a book. No al préstamo de pago en bibliotecas (in Spanish... sorry, automatic translation is no good here).

Re:The Internet is free

[HuguesT]

The libraries are not putting up the result of this scanning effort on the web for all to read. Google is, and is planning to make a profit of it.

If the result of the scanning effort was some index that only library patrons could consult on the libraries' premises, I'm sure no publisher would see anything amiss. However in the Google case they are disseminating *most* of the book content for all to read (copy, archive, etc). This is a brilliant service BTW, and I would agree that even then, Google Print is going to help publishers rather than hinder sales. However the issue is control of the data.

Try Google Print for a while, you'll see that the Google offering is miles better than whan Amazon offers *for the public*. Whereas Amazon lets you read at most 10 pages of any book including the table of content, Google is happy to let you search and browse *most* of the book. They do blot out a page here or there, but it goes beyond fair use IMHO.

In many countries, fair use for sampling is at most a chapter or 10% of a book, whichever is *lower*. This may be outrageous, but that's the Law. Clearly Google goes beyond that on any book I've tried.

BTW it's fairly clear the scanning+OCR part is quick and dirty. There are many uncorrected OCR errors.

Re:The Internet is free

[cloudmaster]

Heh. "Greedheads". :)

This is what I want to know

[Nuttles1]

In order to have an opinion on this whole copyright thing between google and authors/publishers I would like to know the following. How is google going to keep people/organizations from creating or otherwise attaining large server farms or some method to fool googles methods of detecting unique visitors. I mean if such a server farm or something like it can be created/obtained, couldn't one theroretically compile whole texts. In essense getting digital copies of whole libraries? If so, publishers and authors should be very concerned and either should be working with google to solve this issue or sueing them. If not, and this very well may be the case because google as a company is just smart then these publishers/authors are just greedy jerks and should be publically flogged. Does anyone know how google combats the problem of people/organisations compiling whole works?

Re:This is what I want to know

[carlos_benj]

How is google going to keep people/organizations from creating or otherwise attaining large server farms or some method to fool googles methods of detecting unique visitors. I mean if such a server farm or something like it can be created/obtained, couldn't one theroretically compile whole texts.

Sure they could. All they have to do is submit multiple search strings with the text of the book they want to replicate. In order to do this they would have to very nearly replicate a good percentage of the work in their search strings which would yield a jumble of excerpts from various parts of the book that would then need to be reassembled in the correct order. They'd have to have a photographic memory or a copy of the text on hand to enter their search strings and it would just be simpler to either scan it yourself or retype it by hand.

Re:This is what I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

It is already possible, and not terribly difficult, for a person to go to the library and scan every page in the book. I can't see why Google should be obligated to make their excerpt-only system any harder to break than this existing "weakest link." Reasonable protection is, IMHO, all that is warranted. It needn't be impossible to game the system.

Re:This is what I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Creating a server farm to put books back together 4 lines at a time doesn't seem worth the badwidth it would take. Not to mention a conversation much like the following would take place at google.

PR Man: Our new service is popular, look how many hits we got.
Programmer: Wow, wait a minute there is now way...(looks at web logs)... Ahhh half of all the requests came from one IP. (fires up the ol'ban'o'matic)

Re:This is what I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

From the FAQ/help page;
http://print.google.com/googleprint/help.html

6. I'm already logged in. Why are you telling me the page is unavailable?
As part of our efforts to protect a book's copyright, a set of pages in every in-copyright book will be unavailable to all users.

Re:This is what I want to know

[Nuttles1]

It is already possible, and not terribly difficult, for a person to go to the library and scan every page in the book. I can't see why Google should be obligated to make their excerpt-only system any harder to break than this existing "weakest link." Reasonable protection is, IMHO, all that is warranted. It needn't be impossible to game the system.

I think this situation is different than the real life library situation you described. At a library you would be probably be paying 10 cents a page or equivalent if you aren't from the US. And even if you are lucky enough to live around a library with free copying or otherwise have access to free copying. Eventually you will be pissing someone off by wasting their resources. Also, depending on the length of work, it would get very tiresome to manually copy every page of a book. Conversaly, if you did it by hacking googles search then it would be a perfect digital copy. Also, depending on how easy google search would be to circumvent (lets say one computer could do it) then it could be done fairly cheaply. Using your home computer and the broadband bandwith while you are asleep or otherwise idle. I see a BIG difference in what google has brought forward with searchable text of copyrighted books.

Re:This is what I want to know

[Knightman]

You know, building a serverfarm to pull bits of books out of Google is just plain stupid. Easier just to buy the book and much cheaper.

Sheeesh...

Re:This is what I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that Google will implement the same solutions that libraries use to prevent hundreds of people from slowly copying books out of libraries: They put up notices by their copy machines about fair use.

If you think that's inadequate, you're advocating a police state of some sort.

no shit

[lucky130]

Who cares if it falls under those specific examples of "fair use."

This is from copyright.gov:

One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright act (title 17, U.S. Code). One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of "fair use." Although fair use was not mentioned in the previous copyright law, the doctrine has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years. This doctrine has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered "fair," such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

      1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
      2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
      3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
      4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I think google's implementation of this project very clearly falls under scholarship and/or research purposes. Giving the reader brief snippets of the written work along with bibliographical information so they can find a copy of the work themselves certainly satisfies (3) by not reproducing a substantial portion of the work and (4) by, quite possibly, increasing the demand for the work when users desire to seek out a copy to actually read/study.

Re:no shit

[lucky130]

This was actually supposed to be a response to " Copyright Law (Score:4, Insightful)
by op12 (830015) Alter Relationship on Wednesday September 21, @03:25PM (#13616591) ", but I tarded out and didn't put it in the proper place

Re:no shit

[garcia]

Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

            1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

Ahhh yes, but is the *main* reason Google is doing this indexing because they are looking out for research interests or for their own bottom line in advertising revenue?

If we ignore their other intent and instead concentrate on their true reason for doing this, then the picture is a different one.

Re:no shit

[danormsby]

> (3) by not reproducing a substantial portion of the work

The Google index of the book must contain the entire text. This means they have reproduced a substantial portion of the work (all of it) internally.

Re:no shit

[lucky130]

...or continually strive to "organize the world's information"?

Re:no shit

[garcia]

...or continually strive to "organize the world's information"?

They can claim whatever they like -- the bottom line here is that they are still a money making organization and their primary function is not to aid research. It's to make their investors rich.

Re:no shit

[lucky130]

If they own a copy of the book or have permission from the authors, then this is entirely a moot point. And don't forget, authors can opt out of this project.

Re:no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you conveniently are missing ONE important fact (as are so many on here).

Regardless of the end result:
GOOGLE IS COPYING THE WORK IN IT'S ENTIRETY AND STORING IT ON THEIR SERVERS.

Regardless of what they are displaying to their users, they are making an ILLEGAL copy that they did not purchase.

It would be the same if someone borrowed a ton of music CD's they did not own, converted them all to mp3 and made a business off of only allowing users to play 'snippets' of the songs, and claiming their initial infringment of copying the ENTIRE song was ok, since they were sending new sales to the industry.

Load of crap.

Re:no shit

[lucky130]

I'm actually going to digress slightly and use the example in the main topic.
A newspaper's primary concern is making money. Suppose they have a column wherein they review books and have quotes. This is considered "fair use" based on precident. If the review is negative, it clearly hurts the marketability of the book, so it violates (4). A use need not satisfy all conditions to be considered "fair use."

Re:no shit

[carlos_benj]

GOOGLE IS COPYING THE WORK IN IT'S ENTIRETY AND STORING IT ON THEIR SERVERS.

Regardless of what they are displaying to their users, they are making an ILLEGAL copy that they did not purchase.

Correct. And I think that Google may have a problem based on this technicality. This is the letter of the law but I think that what Google is doing is not in violation of the spirit of the law which is to protect copyright holders.

This one could boil down to forum shopping and who has the best attorneys.

Re:no shit

[VikingDBA]

What about a private university? They make money off of tuition. What about a publisher of academic journals and books? Are doing it just to make the world a better place? So Google is trying to make money... That's the news flash?

Re:no shit

[Fallingcow]

Sure, that'd be fine.

But what if the author of the newspaper checked out the book from the library to do the review.

And OCR'd it. ALL of it.

Then didn't destroy the copy or hand it over with the original book when they returned it.

And kept their copy in perpetuity, never paying for a copy at all. Oh, but only in case they need to quote it again, of course.

Pretty sure that would be infringement. They can quote it, but they can't hold a full copy "just in case" unless it's a legitimate one, either purchased or borrowed from one who purchased it.

Re:no shit

[Peter La Casse]

Regardless of the end result:
GOOGLE IS COPYING THE WORK IN IT'S ENTIRETY AND STORING IT ON THEIR SERVERS.

This illustrates a discrepancy between what is legal and what is right. It is often the case that when a computer is involved, actual use of a copyrighted work involves making an illegal copy of that copyrighted work from its original media to the computer's hard drive and from there, to and from different types of memory present in the computer. Sometimes these copies occur across a network (for example, if you happen to store your files on a file server); sometimes there are multiple simultaneous copies (hard disk, hard disk cache, filesystem cache, application memory, etc.)

When ordinary everyday use of legally acquired copyrighted material infringes copyright, the law needs to be fixed.

Something similar to that is what's happening in this case. I don't know how the court will rule, but it's clear that Google's new book indexing service provides a tremendous benefit to the members of the Authors Guild, who thanks to Google will make more money and be more encouraged to create future works. Google's new service results in the same thing that copyright law itself is designed to result in, and yet, a case can be made that Google is violating copyright law. How messed up is that?

Re:no shit

[fferreres]

Reproduction...what they need is the data to be queriable, not "reproduced". They don't need "another copy", they need an indexable format. They can destroy the original copy and still keep a digital one. the question would be, are you allowed to turn digital a printed book? if you can't then what are they selling selling, papaer? or the letter in it in the intentended order?

They "may" end up blocking google...bad for us, bad for them. And...why can I listen to my music in my iPod?

I hope Google wins this one...

Re:no shit

[julesh]

Not necessarily; if all they keep is a content addressable hash which would not allow retrieval of the content except by specifying nearby content, the database may not be taken as a reproduction of the whole work, rather numerous reproductions of small portions of the work, each of which exists independently and for a different purpose. They may get away with this.

Also, reproducing the whole of a work does not exclude it from being fair use; the purpose for which the reproduction is made is taken into account. E.g., web caches make copies of pages their users request. This is considered to be fair use, despite the fact that a copy of the entire page is made.

so if you dont' want your book..

[gl4ss]

to be copied into googles database(which is what they really mean with 'indexing) you can tell them that you don't want your book in it. basically googles stance is that they can do whatever they want with the librarys books unless you specificially tell them to not do it - which is a bit strange, like stealing candy and then saying there wasnt a specific sign saying that you can't steal candy when someone says wtf you're doing...

oh and if authors don't do anything?

****
5. What happens if I do nothing?

If your book is scanned from a library, we'll help users discover it through Google Print and Google. When they click through to view the book, they will be able to see only the limited excerpt view. This view includes links to purchase the book, but will not include a link directly to your website or any additional branding. There will be no advertisements on these pages.
******

which actually sounds a bit funny as they seem to be searchable in full and basically readable in full as well(they wanted a login to view all pages though from some quick stuff I searched through. they do add "copyrighted material" text to the side of the page but that's kind of "no shit sherlock". bottom line being that they did in fact copy the entire books to their database without asking the authors at all.

now if that's OK how about i make a record library and let everyone walk in and copy("index") every record i got there for flat fee of 3$. the library did basically just that anyways so it must be ok if i do it too, right?

making indexes that contain the copyrighted material in full is copying - or else we would have a very convinient loophole to destroy all copyrights...

Re:so if you dont' want your book..

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

basically googles stance is that they can do whatever they want with the librarys books unless you specificially tell them to not do it.

Actually Google, and the law as I read it both say Google can reproduce and publish small excerpts of any book they want to, but if you ask them not to they will exclude your book to be nice. Legally, they have no such obligation.

which actually sounds a bit funny as they seem to be searchable in full and basically readable in full as well

Being searchable in full is sort of the point, and is metadata, i.e. data about what is in a book. That data is a fact and is not copyrightable. As to entire books being viewable, that should only apply to public domain works and works where the copyright holder gave Google their permission. If you can view more than a few pages of any one book, and you don't think it falls into one of those categories, you should submit it as a bug.

making indexes that contain the copyrighted material in full is copying - or else we would have a very convinient loophole to destroy all copyrights.

Sort of like copying a work in RAM, and/or across network devices is copying? The courts have taken into account the intent and the end result of this sort of copying before. If the end user only sees a few pages, then that is probably what the courts will rule is the copied portion in any given instance.

What About MP3.com

[maxxdogg]

Isn't this exactly what MP3.com did years ago with CDs. Behind the scenes they copied every CD they could get there hands on. Then they were able to copy these mp3's into the accounts of users that actually had the physical cd.
When they were sued out of existence, they basically lost not because they were giving users mp3's...but because they had created copies of copyright works into their database.
Just the act of making the original copy into their own database is where they broke the copyright. I think this is where Google might run into some serious problems.

If MP3.com could not do this years ago with CDs, why should Google be allowed to do this now with books?

I'm not saying what is right or wrong. These are just examples of how copyright is hurting the public interest rather than helping...as is the purpose of copyrights.

Re:What About MP3.com

[Lehk228]

because MP3.com gave out whole songs

Re:What About MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. In the sense of Google ingesting the book contents into their database, it is more equivalent to reading a book to understand its contents, which nobody would equate with copying.

The distinction is that MP3.com gave the entire work away from their copy, while Google only shows a small snippet. The significance of the copy redistributed is the critical part of fair use.

Re:What About MP3.com

[Cheeze]

Mmmm...just think, out there somewhere, some guy has a mirror copy of mp3.com

Re:What About MP3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

When they were sued out of existence, they basically lost not because they were giving users mp3's...but because they had created copies of copyright works into their database.

This is not true. They lost because they were sending people copies of copyrighted music without permission. The salient fact that the people already owned legitimate copies and the mechanism was merely a matter of convenience seemed to have little effect on the case.

Just the act of making the original copy into their own database is where they broke the copyright.

No, space-shifting is legal. If it wasn't, then ripping CDs to listen to them on your iPod would be illegal.

Opt-In doesn't work for out-of-print books

[Wesley Felter]

If a book is out of print it is unlikely that the publisher will opt-in. In particular, if the publisher is out of business there may be no way to opt-in at all, ensuring that those works will be lost forever.

And as a practical matter, Amazon/A9 already took care of indexing the books whose publishers are willing to opt-in.

Re:Opt-In doesn't work for out-of-print books

[julesh]

If a book is out of print it is unlikely that the publisher will opt-in.

It isn't up to the publishers. In most cases, the copyright of books is held by the author. This would, of course, make things very difficult for google if they were to operate an opt-in scheme: rather than deal with a few hundred publishers, they have to deal with hundreds of thousands of authors, and the managers of their estates for those who are now deceased. This is impractical for obvious reasons.

We gotta stop this approach now.

[Sheetrock]

Google is attempting to provide an experience which enhances the ability to search within books -- thereby increasing one's ability to discover and purchase books. It is a subset of the functionality that you would get by purchasing or borrowing from a library the entire book (or even browsing one in a bookstore) because the service limits the number of pages you can fetch and intentionally leaves a number of pages out.

No doubt there are two problems with this: the first seems to be that authors (to the best of my knowledge) haven't been asked either piecemeal or via organizations like the Authors' Guild for permission. The second is that Google will no doubt be making money as a result of providing this service and everybody else wants a cut.

However, we have reached an unfortunate point with copyright and fair use where we'd rather halt innovation than admit that copyright holders' expectations have reached a point of making it cost- and time-prohibitive to meet their demands and are to the point of stagnating not only the public domain but technologies and services that deliver or even touch upon copyrighted content. In this sense, creating a scenario that is not unlike the movie industry's dire predictions about the VCR in the early 80s.

It would be best, of course, for Google to attempt to work out an amiable solution with authors without crippling their service to an unreasonable extent, but I feel that the intent of fair use (if not its prevailing interpretation) falls in their favor... as does the bottom-line for both Google and the membership of the Authors' Guild.

Re:We gotta stop this approach now.

[julesh]

It would be best, of course, for Google to attempt to work out an amiable solution with authors without crippling their service to an unreasonable extent

The problem with this approach is, who do they negotatiate with? The Authors' Guild does not represent every author, nor does it claim to. In fact, they only represent a very small minority (about 8,000). Should they also negotiate with the Science Fiction Writers of America (1,500 members), Romance Writers of America (1,600 members with published books), Mystery Writers of America (no obvious stats on their web site, but undoubtedly similar to the other two mentioned), similar organisations for other genres, similar organisations for other nations, other non-genre organisations, etc?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

two separate programs

[bcrowell]

Google Print is really two separate programs: an opt-in program for publishers who want to get publicity for their books, and an opt-our program where google is digitizing books from libraries. I'm participating in the opt-in program as a publisher, and so far it's pretty useless. The only way you would find my books is if you do a search via print.google.com, rather than plain old google.com. For example, this search will turn up one of my books, but a similar search on google.com will only turn up stuff that google would have indexed anyway, even without the Google Print service. (My situation is a little unusual, because my books are free online in digital form. If I was a normal, non-free-information publisher, the google print search would be the only method that would turn up anything.) If you try this search, you'll see that it will give you options for buying the printed book, which is the purpose of the program, from the publisher's point of view; but the problem is that people don't actually search on print.google.com.

I e-mailed Google to ask if I could get my search results to show up on regular google searches, and they said they were studying the possibility. I think what that really means is, they got sued, and they're looking around for a life preserver because they don't know what to do. IIRC, there actually was a period where my books would show up on a regular google search, but now they don't, which is probably google's way of reducing their liability.

It's too bad that the opt-in publishers' program and the opt-out library-based program seem to be joined together in this way, since the former could have been a really good program, but the legal problems with the latter are dragging it down.

Re:two separate programs

[Anonymous Coward]

i wouldn't be surprised if google print got rolled into the main google.com search soon. if i remember correctly, this is basically how their other search services started out... as it's own search, and then after bugs or whatever got worked out, it then got slowly integrated into the main google search.

Re:two separate programs

[QuantumG]

Google Print is in Beta. When it goes out of Beta (and we know how long that takes!) you'll see it as part of the main search. Quit complaining.

Re:Evil

[carlos_benj]

If this were "evil" you might have a point.

Amazon _does_ search in all books

[jtatum]

Books that have "Search Inside!"(tm) have the full text searched when you do a regular Amazon books search. From Amazon:

...with Search Inside!, search results will include titles based on every word inside the book. Search Inside! results are displayed interspersed with the standard results.

Re:Amazon _does_ search in all books

[Anonymous Coward]

Say it with me now: Opt in!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/catalog-guide /guide/-/506469/ref=sib_rdr_pub/104-6325358-674634 6

So, this doesn't show up unless a publisher sends them a book to scan and permission to do so. And yes, it has to be a book, dunno why they won't take a pdf...

for it to be fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't google have to buy all of the books?

Re:for it to be fair use

[mechanicalturk]

wouldn't google have to buy all of the books?

You need not own the books for it to make fair use of their contents. Direct quotation is a case to point. If I were required to own a copy of all books that I use as references in essays/assignments, then I simply could not afford to do them.

Imagine the costs of doing a PhD under those conditions!

Re:for it to be fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a difference though. for your phd thesis you're only using excerpts from the books. google is borrowing the book from the library, making a 100% copy of it, and then returning the book to the library, and THEN giving exerpts from it

Re:for it to be fair use

[Duhavid]

But to do the thesis, he/she ( probably ) read the items, thus, in a sense, making a 100% copy of it.

So, is it illegal then? What if she/he has a "photographic memory" and can remember all of it verbatim? What if he/she doesnt?

Re:for it to be fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

no, because there's a differnece between a photographic memory and a photograph

Re:for it to be fair use

[Duhavid]

Then the nature of the "copy" is important?

SemiDupe

[kevmo]

This was linked to in TFA (http://news.com.com/Authors+Guild+sues+Google+ove r+library+project/2100-1030_3-5875384.html) from http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/21/04 4228&tid=217&tid=17

I guess the editors don't RTFA?

The two risks I see

[ao_coder]

1) For publishers, this could eventually really change things if google print ever endorsed one particular publisher for one-offs of out of print material. 2) For Authors, google print could become large enough that it would essentially be its own marketing channel. As it would be owned by google, authors would then have to accept whatever monopolistic terms google dictated to fulfill what might be perceived as a business necessity. I think that google print is the coolest thing since sliced bread, but I can understand a little bit why the other side might be concerned. My personal view is that the social value of google print is worth the potential cost to authors and publishers- but then again I don't put food on the table by writing or publishing books.

Opt-In makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

While I can understand some of the angst people are directing at Google, here's the real issue:

How the hell do you practically determine (let alone contact) the current copyright holder for books that have long been out of print?

Amazon hasn't faced this problem because they actually sell books. Amazon is only scanning and making searchable those books that it can obtain and sell -- and hence can contact the publisher. It's not an issue of Amazon being "honorable" and Google not.

Google is going to be rendering searchable books that you can't find on Google, or in Barnes & Noble, but only in your library, or maybe a distant university library. If they had the burden of tracking down who, if anyone, still cares about the book, it would remain lost to you. What Google is doing is simply saying, "if you care about your book, just let us know."

And then when you contact Google, proving you're actually the copyright holder isn't an onerous "hoop" you have to jump through. Frankly, I'm surprised you're complaining about it. Even the DMCA requires copyright holders to prove they hold the copyright when they issue a takedown notice.

Re:Opt-In makes sense

[David Off]

> How the hell do you practically determine (let alone contact) the current copyright holder for books that have long been out of print?

Wait till the work goes out of copyright and don't pander to ridiculously long copyright limits. 50 years from the creation of the work seems reasonable to me, maybe less for pop music.

> Amazon hasn't faced this problem because they actually sell books. Amazon is only scanning and making searchable those books that it can obtain and sell -- and hence can contact the publisher.

Amazon Search Inside relies on the rights holder contacting and sending a book to Amazon.

> It's not an issue of Amazon being "honorable" and Google not.

Erm, yes it is.

Re:Opt-In makes sense

[sparkz]

What Google is doing is simply saying, "if you care about your book, just let us know."

Okay, I'm going to rip CDs, DVDs and books, then distribute them via the internet. If a particular band, film producer or author doesn't want me to distribute a specific album, film or book, just let me know, and I promise to stop.

Yeah, that would work. The copyright holders will be happy with that compromise.

Re:Opt-In makes sense

[ElectroBot]

1) Unlike you (a copyright infringing pirate), google is only going to show excerpts from the books (perfectly legal).
2) Google isn't going to distribute even these excerpts. They will only show it to you if you search for it.

What Google is doing is akin to a library having a limit on how much time you can spend reading a part of a single book before you have to borrow it. They (the theoretical library) aren't going to allow you to use the copy machine or take a book out without signing it out (buying it).

Re:Google Fanboism

[Anonymous Coward]

"physical data"? Are you drunk?

wrong litigants

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aren't the libraries being sued?

Aren't they the ones supplying the data to Google?

Are libraries explicitly permitted by the copyright holders to give that information to Google?

Re:wrong litigants

[meringuoid]

Why aren't the libraries being sued?

Headline: 'Authors' Guild sues library for lending books to third-party'.

Somehow I can't see that attracting anything resembling good publicity.

Sparknotes, meet your doom!

[Umuri]

Here's an interesting light that i don't think anyone has bothered addressing. Yes we know the authors might or might not be up in arms about this, but what about the teachers? IF the service really works as they say, then students would be able to quickly search out phrases or texts from books, something a lot of current "educators" use as homework questions since it's pretty impossible to know where they are unless you've read the book. But hey, now we have google? Pretty soon you'll see all schools banning google just because it's getting too useful!

Re:Sparknotes, meet your doom!

[carlos_benj]

I'm not sure I understand your objection. If teachers are testing for "Identify the author and work from which this quotation is taken." I could see the point. If that's enough to swing your grade then I'd contend the teacher isn't doing their job appropriately.

Re:Sparknotes, meet your doom!

[BarakMich]

I call BS.

Searching for quotes would be a boon for both teachers and students. Students are given the book anyway -- so searching within it is merely convienence. It's not like the book's text writes an essay on itself. Teachers would love this because students could more easily do their homework (something that they don't want to do anyway, and many don't), be better prepared for essays, etc.

Like my sibling post -- if the teacher is asking "this quote comes from which book" then there's something wrong with the curriculum. If they're asking "in the quote "x" -- who is being referred to" or the classic "what style/theme is the author presenting?" then Googling would only help both parties.

Re:Sparknotes, meet your doom!

[Fallingcow]

Lots of high school English class essays can be aced by peppering one's work with many relevant quotes from the book. With google, a person could just read a synopsis, figure out which part of the theme or character development or whatever that they wanted to discuss, then google search for quotes to back it up. Bam, on-topic paper with tons of quotes with 1/10th the effort (or less, for huge books like War and Peace it'd be more like 1/100th the effort) it would have taken to actually read the book and write the paper.

You can do that without google, too, by simply skimming pages for keywords... but it's difficult and time consuming enough that it's only marginally easier than just reading the damn thing. With this, it's WAY easier.

Re:Sparknotes, meet your doom!

[carlos_benj]

With this, it's WAY easier.

How so? Wouldn't you need to know the content well enough to formulate meaningful search strings? It doesn't appear to me that the snippet shown would give you enough context to use the quotation without getting burned at some point.

I once had a teacher that wouldn't give you more than a C unless you asked for additional work (because the "average" student just does what's required). He assigned a ton of books. I didn't read any of them, found out too late the test on the material would be essay (instead of multiple guess). I guessed enough from cultural references that I got close on some of them and got a B+ for making him laugh on the ones that were obviously pulled from thin air. If I were using this tool for that project I don't see the results being too terribly different.

Re:Sparknotes, meet your doom!

[Fallingcow]

If you're writing about a non-major character, searching for their name should do the trick. For other stuff, guess relevant words and search away. If you've read a synopsis then you should be able to start getting good results after just a few searches.

We've all learned to go from knowing almost nothing about a topic to finding TONS of info via search engines, through guesses based on the very limited information that we already know. It's a necessary skill for success these days, and doing it to fish for book quotes would be much the same.

Google doesn't search the internet in realtime

[Ender Ryan]

They have a monstrous database. Guess what that database contains? Almost all the data from every site they have indexed. You could probably make a pretty rough approximation of a website with access to google's database.

But, you're wrong anyway. They cache pages, and they also store enough of every page they index to return an appropriate excerpt of the page in your search results.

Re:Google doesn't search the internet in realtime

[Whafro]

The cache is one thing, but excerpts are consistent with fair use.

Undermining

[HTH NE1]

fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself

After extensive undermining of copyright law it was determined that there are no underlying principles anymore.

Re:Google Fanboism

[carlos_benj]

Sorry, where I come from that's called software piracy and is definately illegal.

Not if it's the functional equivalent of a screen shot.

Author's Guild

[Anonymous Coward]

The Author's Guild also was the organization that attacked Amazon for selling used books. (Previously reported by /..)

I know a couple of best-selling authors personally, and none of them have a high opinion of the Author's Guild.

More Google? Wake me up when there's real news.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amusing that not a day goes by almost where there isn't a "Google is wonderful" story floating around here. It goes beyond fanboyism.

Don't get me wrong, Google is my search engine of choice, but come on... Is loving Google so much, and refusing to believe they can doing wrong part of some attempt to be excellent vicariously through them?

Raving and ranting about open source, Linux and the GPL is all good fun. But Google?

Does anyone here actually WORK for Google? Have they done anything for you, besides giving shit away? Oooh, free email.... oooh, maps and satellite photos... That's all very nice, and I appreciate it, but it doesn't make them saints.

Didn't they fire some kid for blogging about his first month of employment? Still think their shit don't stink?

When are people going to wake up and realize that they're a for-profit corporation with a very good P.R. department?

Google rock, blah blah MS suck, blah blah.

(no, there's no point to this flame bait)

Similar to mp3.com lawsuit

[usurper_ii]

I would agree with Google and say that they have an open and shut case, but I thought that about mp3.com, too. Remember in that case, even though it is 100% legal to format shift, and that is what mp3.com was doing (you had to have access to a legit CD before mp3.com would give you access to the same songs in mp3 format), they got the crap beat out of them when it actually went to trial.

Our courts are behind the times and are consistently siding with the entrenched industry, it seems.

Anyway, I seem to remember mp3.com sued their lawfirm, which told them what they were doing would hold up in court. Does anyone know how that turned out?

Usurper_ii

Re:Similar to mp3.com lawsuit

[usurper_ii]

I found some information:

Law.com is reporting that MP3.com has filed a malpractice lawsuit again Cooley Godward, a law firm, alleging that it was responsible for allowing MP3.com to launch and subsequently be sued for copyright infringement by giving bad advice on the legality of My.MP3.Com ( MP3.com Sues Cooley Over Legal Advice ). The charges are quite loaded, alleging that Cooley was basically inept their legal analysis of fair use and other copyright doctrines, and perhaps even misrepresented to MP3.com about expert testimony the Cooley firm had secured.

This isn't a small lawsuit either. MP3.com wants $175 million.

Mod parent up

[Orrin Bloquy]

I work in a university library which is trying to go as digital as possible. The publishers are bending us over a barrel and fucking us in the arse with fees, fees which when not paid result in all future access being cut off. Google is a for-profit corporation selling branded advertising which believes it has more fair use rights than us, an actual "scholarly" institution? Jesus fucking christ. I was working in a copy shop when the SCOTUS dropped the hammer on Kinko's as to the line between "fair use" and duplication for profit. It hasn't moved much since then, and it'll be damned interesting to see SCOTUS reverse itself on this.

Re:Google Fanboism

[carlos_benj]

I should point out that I'm talking about what is made available rather than what is scanned.

The truth is known

[Anonymous Coward]

Information wants to be free

From a Librarian

[jfrumkin]

IANAL (I am not a lawyer), but IAAL (I am a Librarian). While I personally agree that there *should* be the ability to digitize these collections and make them searchable, I think Google's in a whole heck of a mess here.

I don't think that this is necessarily fair use. The article linked to in post presents a case which relates to images, and traditionally copyright around images has been dealt with much differently than copyright related to texts, so I'm not sure how relevant the stated case might be. That being said, the one major flaw I see is that the libraries Google is partnering with purchased the books, and Google is 'borrowing' those books. If I borrow a book from my library, I am not allowed to photocopy the entire book. Maybe the Library has the right to do so for preservation (i.e. backup) or other purposes, but I do not. Even though Google is trying to hold to fair use practices through what it offers to its users, Google itself seems like it is likely to be breaking copyright by holding full copies of these works.

Now, should the publishers be making a big fuss? Well, maybe and maybe not. It doesn't appear that Google's effort will harm publishers, and is likely to help them. However, Google is not the only player out there who would be interested in massively copying monographs, and if the publishers let this pass, it might set a precedent which could come back to bite them. It isn't clear to me that the publishers are in the right, or that Google is entirely in the wrong, but if I were a publisher, I'd do the same thing, most likely.

I believe the other crux of the problem is that Google bulldozed its way forward with this project. Imagine if it was Microsoft instead of Google doing this; the slashdot comments would probably be entirely different. I admire Google moxie in pushing this issue, but I also am pained that they lacked the patience to work out some of the issues with the publishers before they pushed forward.

Re:From a Librarian

[Anonymous Coward]

That being said, the one major flaw I see is that the libraries Google is partnering with purchased the books, and Google is 'borrowing' those books. If I borrow a book from my library, I am not allowed to photocopy the entire book.
Wait... they don't even own a copy of the book?
WTF were they smokeing when they came up with that stupid plan.
Gezze I thought these people were suppose to be smart.
While the leagality of google print maybe in question. Making massive amounts of copys of books you don't even own is grossly illegal.

Re:From a Librarian

[Anonymous Coward]

but if I were a publisher, I'd do the same thing, most likely.

Then you'd be a fool, because by actually taking the case to court you are in danger of setting a precedent that you don't want to set. If you lose, then all the other 'players' that will have a negative effect on your business will be able to continue with impunity.

Better to let Google be, because you're likely to have a stronger case against the guy that is actually going to harm you. Then you can go and sue them.

Something like the Google library should be mandated by law anyway. I'm sick of copyright holders restricting their work without any compensation to the people that have granted them the right in the first place. It's a bit like buying a car - you can drive off, but if your check doesn't clear, then legally you don't own the car. Copyright should be the same, if you don't do something to make the work useful to the public, then too bad, the work goes back to the public.

Re:From a Librarian

[Anonymous Coward]

So... much.. bullshit.

1. So the crux of your legal argument says "If I let Bob do something for years, but then Chris comes along and tries to do that too, my legal argument for suing Chris will be that better for letting Bob get away with it for all those years?" How does that even make sense?

2. Copyright holders own the work. It belongs to them. If you don't like that, go work on your own fucking material. But the public doesn't have the right to bulldoze over the originator's rights just because he isn't using them the way they would like.

Think of it this way:

I paint something.
I like it. I keep it.
The police kick down my door and take my painting to put it in a museum, since I wasn't sharing it with the public.

Yeah, I'd want to create something with the rights you'd provide me. Next up you'd say you should be able to take your neighbors tv, since he doesn't use it NEARLY enough.

Re:From a Librarian

[cpt kangarooski]

Doesn't really matter. The narrow exception for libraries aside, no one, whether they own a copy of a copyrighted book or not, can lawfully reproduce copies of it without permission. While in some cases, ownership of a copy might change the outcome of a fair use analysis (factor 4, basically), that's not an issue here. Google is not making copies of books to avoid having to buy the copies they used as their source; they're making copies that are basically unrelated to what they used as source material. (In that they could've purchased the right to build their database, but that's not the same thing as buying paperbacks)

Re:From a Librarian

[craig.hathaway]

Whilst I agree with what you are saying, what pains me more is the low-tech way in which Google implemented there library: i.e. digital scans. With all the benefits that OCR would bring, Google would get much wider support for their actions beacuse as it stands they have simply ripped these books off. No variable sized fonts; multiple parse images, no text selection, no onpage searching, no multiple page printing / viewing. A community effort (Wiki) could corrcet the % of OCR errors. A missed opportunity. IMHO, this tool will not do for books what google earth will do / has done for maps. Nothing to worry about yet as the tree-edition is still more useful. On the flip side, this is yet another example of an **PA falling asleep at the wheel, waking up to see their demise staring them in the face, and sueing as a last resort. Where is the better alternative they are offering? CHeers

Re:From a Librarian

[Anonymous Coward]

OK... so could my (very) small corporation offer a competing service that Google does? This will let me, err, the corporate employee[s] copy anything with reckless abandon so long as we/I/it share snippets with the public in some money-making scheme? I'm not oppossed to this but rather find the implications interesting. If the MPAA or RIAA or any other AA doesn't want me/corporate me copying shit, then send a request to...

Re:From a Librarian

[dominator]

I'm confused by those who think that Google isn't unambiguously in the clear here. Not because they're doing it for a scholarly purpose. Or because they're only reproducing a terse portion of the work. Or not even because what Google is doing can't possibly affect these author's past decisions to create their works, and thus retroactively disincentivize their creation (ahem, Sonny Bono CTEA, I'm looking at you here...).

I think that if you're arguing those points, perhaps you're looking at this from a too-narrow perspective. Look outside of the box. Sure, Google might (or might not) win on the above points alone. But I don't think that Google is copying expressive works. Google is copying databases of words.

In the case of Rural v. Feist, the Court ruled that databases (in that case, telephone directories) were not entitled to copyright protection, as they contained little (if any) expressive content. Copyright protects expression fixed in a tangible media, and even then only within certain limitations.

Here, I believe that Google is treating otherwise expressive, copyrighted texts as databases, thus stripping them of their expressivity in the context of the texts' use. I think that the use of a derivitive work matters a great deal in determining that work's expressivity before the Court.

The search results page rendered by Google might have some expressiveness, and be copyrightable. The texts that Google OCR'd most likely are expressive and copyrightable. But Google's treatment of these texts as search indexes - reverse text lookup databases - is in itself not expressive. They're just unexpressive token sequences, capable of being searched. It is in the translation from meaningful, expressive words into an ordered sequence of cold, machine-searchable tokens that the work loses its expressivity. Note that this distinction would still attach copyright protection to things like eBooks, as the purpose of eBooks is to convey expressivity to a human reader via an electronic medium. The purpose of tokens is to convey an ordered sequence of words to an algorithm incapable of appreciating the work's expressivity or content in any way that we'd call "meaningful".

From that, we're left to conclude that the tokens "John Galt" appearing on page 1 of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" next to the tokens "Who is" is merely a fact, absent any inherent meaningful expressivity. And absent this expressivity, copyright doesn't attach to this sentence (which, fwiw, is probably considerably too short for copyright to attach to, anyway). Facts - even collections of facts - simply aren't protected under copyright law.

Google's Print project is just a fact retrieval system - in essence, no different from the index in the back of the book that they're OCR'ing. Copyright law needn't get involved, because it simply doesn't apply.

Re:From a Librarian

[cpt kangarooski]

The trick is to comply with the requirements of the law.

However, I'm not sure what you think would allow you to make copies of copyrighted works, without authorization, provided that you commercially distribute them, at least not without something more. And so I'm unconvinced that Google's plan is a good one. I think they stand a good chance of getting the bejeezus sued out of them.

Re:From a Librarian

[Anonymous Coward]

So the crux of your legal argument says "If I let Bob do something for years, but then Chris comes along and tries to do that too, my legal argument for suing Chris will be that better for letting Bob get away with it for all those years?" How does that even make sense?

You missed his point. If you let Bob do something that earns you a lot of money, and then Chris comes along and does something similar that costs you money, you have a much better legal argument for suing Chris, than if you already had a precedent saying that the similar thing that Bob did was fully legal.

Copyright holders own the work. It belongs to them. If you don't like that, go work on your own fucking material. But the public doesn't have the right to bulldoze over the originator's rights just because he isn't using them the way they would like.

It works the other way around. The copyright holder only owns the work (for a limited time even), because the public gave him those rights. If the public no longer thinks they are getting their part of the deal, it's up to them to stop giving the author those rights.

If it was not for corrupt politicians, the public would probably have stopped giving authors those rights years ago.

Why didnt...

[mayhemt]

Authors Guild sue google for showing their geo location on 'google maps' when u paste 31 E 28th St, 10th Floor New York, NY 10016-7923????? Isnt that privacy law infringement??? Isnt that showing a robber 'this is the address of Authors Guild...go rob 'em???'

Re:Copyright Law (fair-use definitions)

[Mozz Alimoz]

I'm a web master for an on-line literature magazine. The works on that site and other web sites are copyright protected. Search engines already show snippets of this on-line content and there was no uproar.

IANAL,
but http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html #howmuch was probably written by them and it says:

How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See FL 102, Fair Use, and Circular 21, Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.

From this I can see many places were Google is going to have a tough time are arguing that their use is fair. I suspect that they'll fall back to just doing books they get permission for. I expect that many publishers will flock to send them lists of works to add to their indexes.

While I accept that Google doesn't show much of the copyrighted work on one page, they are really publishing much of the work within the Google site. I can imagine a program being written to query google over and over again to reverse engineer a full work.

-- Want a more interesting quick read? VerbSap

So buy them.

[rknicker]

I see the issue in the initial copying to their database, so why doesn't google buy the collections for $1, then sell them back when they're done. I buy used books and sell them back all the time.

Re:So buy them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I rent netflix movies, copy them, and give them back when I'm done all the time.. er...yeah

Re:So buy them.

[Wesley Felter]

When Google sells back the collection, they'd have to delete the copies, thus defeating the purpose. Copyright law allows you to make copies as long as the copies follow the original.

Is this what copyright is for....

[clifgraves]

Libraries have purchased the copy(s) they lend out. I see no problem in having Google post info and excerpts from copyrighted books, that is fair use! But assuming that they have free reign to redistribute full works unless the author gives them an exclude list is not. (no it is not right for the wayback machine to do the same with websites ether, but you can say that the website was "given away" freely so give them a bit of a pass). Call me a Ludite, but as far as I can see there is nothing in the Copyright law that says that it is Ok to steal copyrighted stuff unless the owner finds you and gives you a list of things They don't want you to steal. (Isn't that what copyLeft is about?). It is hard enough for Authors to make a living at writing without Google stealing their works and giving them away for free.

An interesting precedent if it succeeds

[Zey]

An interesting precedent if it succeeds. Your local bittorrent site can simply offer the record companies and film industry the ability to opt out of having their works reproduced by a particular torrent if they happen to find it's been copied and then impose highly bureaucratic mechanisms for them to prove who they are before they act.

Who knew you just had to be a big company for your theft of copyright to become 'legal'... Everyone else wanting to publish content has to make do with only publishing copyright expired works, works for which they've purchased the rights to or those they own directly by virtue of being the author themselves.

Re:An interesting precedent if it succeeds

[Yotsuya]

Nope. See, thanks to 'fair use' they can do what they are doing anyway.. which is showing small snippets out of copyrighted books.
They are offering the opt-out out of politeness, not as a legal cop-out.

Unlike bittorrent sites that will copy entire works in full.

Snippets = ok.
In full = copyright infringement

Re:An interesting precedent if it succeeds

[David Off]

Erm, you should maybe go read the article. They are scanning in copyright works without the rights holder's permission and then making snippets available for gain.

Re:An interesting precedent if it succeeds

[Zey]

Unlike bittorrent sites that will copy entire works in full.

Torrent sites generally have no copies of the works. They just coordinate sharing. Each of those bittorrent clients is "showing small snippets out of copyrighted [works]" available to each other. Rarely does one torrent client copy the entirity of a work to another client ;-).

Amazon wasn't the first

[Anonymous Coward]

This Stephen King site has been doing full-text book searches prior to Amazon and Google's services.

Best Soviet Russia joke ever.

[Toxygen]

That was brilliant.

I just remember reading a post the other day from a reader berating another for his Soviet line, saying that it's only funny when it has some deeper irony. This was the best conceived Russia joke I've seen in a long while.

Re:Best Soviet Russia joke ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. That made my day.

Re:Google Fanboism

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point completely. The problem is not the method or the amount or the functionality that they are displaying.

The problem is:
They are not purchasing the data from the legitimate owners in the first place!

They are copying the data in it's entirety without paying for it and then choosing to divy it up to their users. This is *not* fair use.

Google Print is probably unworkable

[FishandChips]

There's nothing wrong with what Google are proposing providing it's on the basis of a clearly defined legal contract with the holder of the reproduction rights in question.

In many, perhaps most cases the rights holder will not be the author but the publisher to whom the author has assigned publication and reproduction rights, in this case electronic reproduction rights, for the legal term of copyright (if it's a standard book deal).

Google are miles from establishing that their intended use of the material is "fair use" of any kind, an extremely tenuous concept that varies wildly depending on who you are and where you are.

Authors are surely right to worry that while today Google may have no underhand motive, this cannot be said of the future by which time the company may have a few million books under their belt and ideas of flowing lots of cash from them.

In the meantime, this leaves Google facing off with the book publishing industry (among others) at some stage, thousands and thousands of seedy, impecunious outfits desperate for a bit of grab grab grab. The actual authors will be lucky to see 10 per cent of any money by the time the publishers have got hold of it, siphoned off massive commissions and then sat on it for six months or a year. I'd rather be dipped in shit than have to negotiate my way through that lot and in time Google may well decide the same.

Re:Copyright Law (fair-use definitions)

[op12]

While I accept that Google doesn't show much of the copyrighted work on one page, they are really publishing much of the work within the Google site. I can imagine a program being written to query google over and over again to reverse engineer a full work.

That method will not work according to Google in this article:
"Anybody who's clever enough can download the entire book," Hull said. Not true, said Jim Gerber, director of content partnerships for Google. "Martin Heidegger On The Way," for example, was submitted to Google by the publisher. Under those circumstances, people would only be allowed to see a maximum of 20 percent of the book, and a percentage of random pages are blocked completely.

And this link (PDF) in the blog response explains how Google's program is probably going to be allowed to proceed.

Google are wrong

[David Off]

Google are 100% wrong on this, they are stealing other people's work to make money for themselves. If authors or publishers want to use Google print they can, but it is completely wrong for Google to rip-off other people's work without permission.

Google should concentrate on the opt-in Google Print service rather than stealing other people's intellectual property.

Re:Google are wrong

[Aranth Brainfire]

"they are stealing other people's work to make money for themselves."

So, by using up bandwidth to display portions of books that search results match, and providing links to Amazon and so on where you can buy the books, all on pages without ads... how exactly is this making money for Google again?

Re:Google are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Stealing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the work still remains with the author, he has not somehow been deprived of every last copy of his words. Oh wait, you mean "unauthorised copying" but would rather use emotive language because you *know* you can't get to the hearts & minds any other way (check up the phrase "weasel words").

Re:Google are wrong

[David Off]

> So, by using up bandwidth to display portions of books that search results match, and providing links to Amazon and so on where you can buy the books, all on pages without ads... how exactly is this making money for Google again?

You are obviously not good at business, probably why you are not working for Google.

They make money when you buy a book from Amazon etc, it is called an "affliate programme". They make money from the advertizing, it is called AdSense in case you are not aware of it.

If rights holders want to upload books to Google Print that is all fine and dandy. Google, you know, that big huge evil public company, should not just be scanning other people's work without asking permission. Opt-out sucks and is evil.

Re:Google are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You are such a moron.

Re:Google are wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Google are 100% wrong on this, they are stealing other people's work to make money for themselves. If authors or publishers want to use Google print they can, but it is completely wrong for Google to rip-off other people's work without permission.

Google should concentrate on the opt-in Google Print service rather than stealing other people's intellectual property.

Google isn't stealing; they're quoting. Does the newspaper "steal" your words when they quote them back at you, even though they "make money for themselves"?

Re:Google are wrong

[Jim_Callahan]

"He stole my idea" is an entirely valid english phrase. The language is defined by the people that speak it, and intellectual thievery has been included under the umbrella of 'stealing' in common usage since at least the 1700s. The distinction between IP violation and theft amounts to a specialized dialect, or jargon if you will, of the legal field. I don't chastise people when they use 'power' and 'force' interchangeably, even though the two concepts are quite distinct in the jargon of my field. Nor do I demand that people clarify wether they mean a lb-f or a lb-m when they say 'pound'. In return, I ask that people not get overly excited when I use 'stealing' to describe things that the word has been used to describe for 300 years, even though it is not the most technically accurate description of what's going on in the vocabulary of a two-decade old legal field.

Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[hurfy]

This is what Google will show people. They will not let you infringe the copyright perhaps.

but

Hasn't Google already copied the entire thing for their own use?
They are not a library, they will not loan me the book, they are a corp.

How is that ok, but i can't copy it for my use. I want to have a copy handy in case a friend asks a question, i could look up the answer and only provide them that snippet so they don't have to get the whole book. Honest i won't read it all (unless thats what it takes to find the snippet i need...)

I do agree there should be a digital library of everything, but without a specific mandate from congress or something to allow it i don't see how it passes muster.
Greater good? Will there be no ads on sites related to this function?

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[Shimmer]

Hasn't Google already copied the entire thing for their own use?

I think that's a good point, but note that it's no different from the current Google web search: they have a cached copy of the entire web, including loads of copyrighted material. Is that legal?

-- Brian

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[yfarren]

Yes. They have. Go on and read the article linked to google's article. The Idea is that google's USE is transformative. They arent merely copying it. They are doing something with it.

Under Fair Use, the Idea is that you are allowed to copy things to DO something with it. In general the idea is that if you are copying the whole thing, then you arent doing something with the work, but are merely using the work, and dont fall into fair use. However, there are cases, where even copying of an entire work, if the use of that entire work is sufficiently transformative, is fair use.

So for instance, I am allowed to incorporate a picture of a copyrighted picture in my artwork. Evev if the picture I am using is a full copy, provided that my use is transformative. If google's use of the entire book is not to have the book, but a substantive transformation (and an index has been held to be sufficiently transformative before), then it may well be protected under Fair Use. Even if they are copying the whole thing.

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[sparkz]

I can't see anybody having a problem with that; Google respect /robots.txt, and the copyright holders have delegated the authority of passing out that copyrighted material to webserver software. That software is acting on behalf of the (c) holder, and happily giving out copies to any piece of software which uses the HTTP protocol to request the document.

It'd be pretty tough to set up a system of "anyone can have this document" but then say "Hey, you've got a copy of this (which I gave you, sans proviso) - stop it now!" - especially when the protocol has already been configured with a robots.txt specification, which Google (if not all robots) respect.

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[sparkz]

I'm not sure where you live, but I'd get a lawyer, if I were you.

That's certainly not how I understand US or UK copyright law.

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[yfarren]

You need to update your understanding of US copyright law, then. The reason schools, librarys (in the US at least, I really know very little about UK law) have signs "dont copy the whole book" is that the fair use test does consider how much of a thing you use. However, it is only one factor. So a school, for instance, cant copy an article or chapter for educational purposes, without paying royalties, while the same school may publish a heavily edited article, containing much or all of the same article, where the article is used as a point of discussion. Fair use stays intentionally vague about what exactly _IS_ fair use, in much the same way the courts stay vague on what is "obscene" (you are still not allowed to publish "obscene" material in the US, but the deffinition of "obscene" is all but non-existant). So, while I couldnt tell you how the courts WILL decide, the issues that I raised in my above post are some of the questions (and likely issues that google would use in its deffense) which would be raised at a trial.

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[LuYu]

I will play the devil's advocate, too:

What about "rights" to "derivative works"? Do they not trump fair use?

Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec

[Anonymous Coward]

Your apostrophe key is broken.

The internet is only free as in beer

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something is on a web page it does not mean that is available under GPL type terms.

Why does Google (and other search engines) assume that they have the right to copy and reproduce the entire content of my site without seeking express permission?

I understand how to use robots.txt, but surely it would be better implemented as an opt-in protocol.

Just because I leave my front door open does not mean I give you permission to raid my food cupboards.

Could a bot retrieve a whole work?

[DeadVulcan]

A more interesting question is whether someone could write a bot that could run a whole bunch of queries and eventually piece together an entire work.

And if so, then I'd venture that Google needs to do something to assure the Authors Guild that they protect against that kind of abuse. Not that I think it would be all that difficult.

Re:Could a bot retrieve a whole work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, someone tried to do that already. CARNET (Croatian academic and research network) provides cheap access to the internet for modem users. As a result of actions of that user entire modem-users subrange of CARNET was banned from google. Yes, they could'n access www.google.com. The issue was resolved only after a few weeks.
See http://www.cmu.carnet.hr/ for more info about that case...

Re:Could a bot retrieve a whole work?

[zalas]

Coincidentally, I was trying to piece together some text from a website that had been taken offline. It was still in Google's records, since I could search for it, but there was not "Cache" option I could click on. What I essentially did was try to remember pieces from the original text, and search using Google to get it to highlight it, and then searching a little bit ahead and back with the other words it pulled up. It doesn't work too well, since sometimes it refuses to go forward or back; your search term would simply be the first entry or the last entry in the excerpt. I had to come up with a lot of "seed" phrases in order to get the whole thing, which was only around 20 lines of text. Theoretically, this would mean that the bot would have to have a dictionary of "seed" words or phrases to start with, and then once it gets all its sequences, it would then need to piece them together like one would piece together the amino acid sequence of a protein from subpeptides.

Re:Could a bot retrieve a whole work?

[sparkz]

If you want to follow links from a Google-cached item which doesn't exist, just enter the URL you want to follow into google.com and choose the "cache" option.

Eg - if you want to view Google's cache of http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml, then just type "http://steve-parker.org/sh/sh.shtml" into Google, and select the "Show Google's cache of ..." option.

If you can bot that, then you've got it botted (is that a word?!)

Re:Could a bot retrieve a whole work?

[Anonymous Coward]

a bot couldn't do this without attracting attention, no.

Shouldn't be *any* procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

This is something that, in my opinion, should clearly be opt-in, not opt-out. Google makes you jump through some hoops to stop them from slurping your material. Why is the burden placed on the copyright holder?

Why should Google have any additional obligations in this regard? They're already being more charitable to the copyright holders than they legally have to be.

Google has the legal right to quote others verbatim. So do you, so do I, so does everyone. It's part of your free speech rights, and it's called "fair use". I can quote a small fragment of anyone's work, legally, for free, without the author's permission, or even contrary to the the author's stated wishes. I even (especially?) have the right to quote someone when that quote will make them look bad, and they don't want the truth of what they really said to get out. Sure, copyright exists, but it doesn't completely erase our free speech rights, either.

Google is doing the authors who don't want to be listed a nice favour by not listing them, but that's entirely Google's choice! The copyright holders can't legally force you, me, or Google not to quote them. [1]

All Google is asking is that the purported authors prove that they are in fact the real authors of the works in question, and not just some random troll from the Internet. That's not so much to ask, given that these authors want Google to do them a free favour in return.
--
AC

[1] Obvious, you can't quote more than fair use allows. Google's position is that a series of on-demand quotes count as fair use, and they have lawyers which support that legal position.

Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Evil is whatever Sergey says is Evil.

Fair use not automatic

[The Empiricist]

Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair . . . I think google's implementation of this project very clearly falls under scholarship and/or research purposes.

All four factors of "fair use" must be taken into consideration by the courts. See Rich. And because any alleged infringement can usually be distinguished from pre-existing case law, there is no such thing as an automatic fair use because one of the factors weighs heavily in favor of the alleged infringer. Copying 300 words can be an infringement while copying an entire work may not be an infringement. See Hollaar .

Until the courts decide whether a particular activity is a fair use, the alleged infringer is legally a kind of Schrodinger's Cat. Until the courts decide, Google is in a sense both a guilty infringer and an innocent fair user. Only legally observing Google's state by trial can definitively answer the question of whether Google's acts infringe on the rights of the plaintiff authors.

Re:Google Fanboism

[carlos_benj]

Nah. I didn't miss the point. I just addressed it in another post. I was addressing the idea that the functional equivalent of a screenshot would constitute piracy in the realm of software.

the best way to fight this

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Authors Guild,
You have 2 choices.
1) Let us advertise your books and links to purchase them in our Library thingy at no cost to you
OR
2) We'll replace every link in our search engine referring to each book with a link to its pornographic parody. If a book has no parody, we will construct one by feeding the text into the web porn generator.
PS: Quote from our lawyers: You have no chance to survive make your time

It's about competition from the public domain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps what entrenched interests are really scared of is that GooglePrint will increase the actual and percieved value of public domain texts.

Then travesties like the Sonny-Bonno copyright act that steal from the public domain and keep books in the dark might encounter the broad resistance that they merit.

I guess I now understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why does Google (and other search engines) assume that they have the right to copy and reproduce the entire content of my site without seeking express permission?"

Why do people *in general* assume they can come to your web site and copy it to their browser cache without seeking express permission?

Why is that?

There is very fundamental reason.

A really really fundamental reason...

Its so basic that perhaps you're too "smart" to see it.

Its so so basic. Have you guessed it yet? Have you?

Think basic. Really basic. Why do people assume, in general, its okay to go to your web site and copy it over the internet to your hard disk to be viewed by you.

Why do people make the assumption that its okay without seeking permission.

Think think think.

I know you can do it.

I know you can.

Go ahead.

Really.

Go ahead.

Seriously, can you not figure this out?

If you can't figure it out, I suggest asking someone on the short bus tomorrow on the way to "school".

Re:I guess I now understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll choose to ignore your pitiful attempt at sarcasm, I don't really want to get into a personal argument about this.

Back to the point...

The content on my website is available on a non-commercial basis to the public.

In exchange for me granting these rights I simply ask that anyone who wishes to reproduce my work for commercial gain seeks permission and possibly pay me a token sum.

The fact of the matter remains that Google has 'taken' my work without asking for permission and is reproducing it commercially.

Re:I guess I now understand...

[MrAndrews]

How do you figure that's reproducing it commercially? They don't ask for money to view it, they're not packaging it as their own, and they're not putting on paper and selling it in bookstores. I don't see anything about their behaviour that suggests a commercial exploitation. The closest you get is that they're a for-profit company. But that doesn't mean they profit from every facet of their operations...

Re:I guess I now understand...

[rob_squared]

"I don't see anything about their behaviour that suggests a commercial exploitation."

AdWords

Re:I guess I now understand...

[MrAndrews]

"AdWords"

Might just be me, but I've never seen AdWords on the Google cache pages. You do see them on search results page, but the act of linking to various pages on your site isn't commercial exploitation of your content. It's a clever distinction on their part that is probably designed to keep people from suing them for cashing in on other people's content.

Re:I guess I now understand...

[rob_squared]

And I think it's good that they are legal. I'm just hoping they keep on the legal side. Maybe they'll leave print in beta like their news. ;)

Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[Everyman]

I wrote to administrators, and to each Regent at the University of Michigan, trying to get them to look at Section 108 of the Copyright Act, which specifies the limits of library copying as an instance of fair use. I believe that Section 108 prohibits U.Michigan from what they are allowing Google to do with their books.

I also wrote to the Authors Guild, expressing my frustration that U.Michigan ignored me. A copy of that letter is here.

Google is a weed growing in the copyright garden. I was thinking that Section 108 might be used to trim back the weed. The Authors Guild is wisely hoping to pull it out by the roots. If that doesn't work, maybe they can trim it back later.

I'm quite happy with The Author's Guild suit. It looks to me like they know what they're doing. Maybe five years down the road, when the Supremes establish that opt-in also applies to websites, then we'll be able to force robots.txt into an opt-in mode instead of the present opt-out mode. That will fragment the monopoly of the big search engines, and help to give the web back to the webmasters.

If Google could show snippets from books without first copying the entire book, and if they did this without any commercial interest or intent, then I think they might have a fair-use argument. But there are some hurdles before they can get to that argument.

Many Google acolytes like to point out that Google already grabs much of the web in its entirety, which is copyrighted by default. That's true. But that doesn't mean it's legal. All it means is that search engines started doing this before webmasters got organized into associations (they still aren't organized), and there was no one to challenge the engines.

Now if webmasters had been around as long as authors, and were organized to protect their interests, the engines would have never gotten this far with their illegal crawling for profit.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just pissed because you operate a "non-profit" that does basically the same thing but only extracts the names from texts. Then you try to sell individual pages in response to queries.

You make me sick, acting all high and mighty when you are really being selfish!

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[joelsanda]

Many Google acolytes like to point out that Google already grabs much of the web in its entirety, which is copyrighted by default.

This statement is far too general. Could not the same claim be made of any sytem that categorizes books and journals so a potential user locates them - like a library card catalog?

Pointing to a resource is a much different animal than illegally copying the resource for one's own gain - financial or otherwise.

Furthermore, the prohibition of copying copyrighted works specified in Section 108 of the copyright act is for libraries and archives, and even there specifies a copy can be made if the copyright notice is maintained, it's not for financial gain, and isn't available to people outside of library/archive premises. See: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#108.

Of course, the idea of 'premises' is laughable in the Age of the Internet, but I think the point you tried to make citing Section 108 is a real stretch and in no way bears any resemblance to what the law intends.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[QuantumG]

You're a cock smoker.

Copyright is evil and so are you.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[cranos]

Now if webmasters had been around as long as authors, and were organized to protect their interests, the engines would have never gotten this far with their illegal crawling for profit.

Yes and the web as we know it would not exist. Just remember that the relationship between search engines and web sites is a two way street, where the search engine gets content, the web site potentially gets traffic.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[markjhood2003]

If Google could show snippets from books without first copying the entire book, and if they did this without any commercial interest or intent, then I think they might have a fair-use argument.

This is the core issue, and suggests an ethical way for Google to proceed. Google should not be be scanning and copying the text themselves. Libraries and other public, non-commercial institutions should perform the scans, put them into their own searchable databases, and then allow Google to index them if they choose do so.

I just can't imagine allowing a for-profit corporate behemoth like Google to be responsible for warehousing potentially millions of scanned books, with nothing but their promise to "do no evil" as a deterent to abuse.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[josh82]

"Many Google acolytes like to point out that Google already grabs much of the web in its entirety, which is copyrighted by default."

"This statement is far too general. Could not the same claim be made of any sytem that categorizes books and journals so a potential user locates them - like a library card catalog?"

Perhaps the above person was referring to how google seems to cache damn-near all of the text of the web (including pdf-files). I mean, I could access just google and get more than half of all the textual information I normally look for (excluding recent crap). Furthermore, it is surely in their own financial interests for this to be so, because if they were unable to store full-texts and only have a handful of keywords (as in a card-catalogue), people would only be able to find a handful of the most topical websites that they search for, and not the plethora that google provides. Surely the google empire wouldn't be quite so large if that were the case.

Library card-catalogues, on the other hand, do not cache full-texts. If they did, authors' guilds might be raising a similar stink over the issue. However, given that card-catalogues (or, even libraries as a whole, one might say) are not online, there is less chance for widespread IP infringement, as, even though a library lends out books for free, it takes a considerable bit of a long time to locate for a book, borrow it, and photocopy it all (if one were so inclined) and only one person can do so with that copy of the book at one time.

Surely the level of ease in doing such a thing online (i.e., almost instant ease) is what panics that author's guild.

Anyhow, you are definitely right in critiquing the above claim. That is, the claim that "Google already grabs much of the web in its entirety, which is copyrighted by default" asserts that there is no difference between caching full-texts of physical, offline books and caching crap on the web which is already on the web and available instantly to everyone anyway.

There certainly is a difference--people publish shit on the web intending for anyone to be able to view it. People publish books intending for people to either buy the book or go to a library to check out a copy, which the library has bought, and which is unavailable to others until returned.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote to administrators, and to each Regent at the University of Michigan, trying to get them to look at Section 108 of the Copyright Act, which specifies the limits of library copying as an instance of fair use. I believe that Section 108 prohibits U.Michigan from what they are allowing Google to do with their books.

Libraries may perform any action in accordance with Section 107, whether or not it is granted explicitly under Section 108. Google argues that excerpts such as it is producing are covered under fair use. For instance:

If Google could show snippets from books without first copying the entire book, and if they did this without any commercial interest or intent, then I think they might have a fair-use argument. But there are some hurdles before they can get to that argument.

Google doesn't have to copy the entire book to create an index. All it does is create a large wordlist, and for each word makes a reference back to the book for each occurrence of the word. This is perfectly legal, since it's simply a table of factual data. The only addition is that Google adds, for each reference, the context within which the word was found, e.g. the actual excerpt from the book. It is entirely possible that Google only stores the excerpt for each reference in the index, and not the entire book, which should be fair use. What is the use of an index that only gives you a result of page numbers from a book (and edition!) that you don't have? How else would you propose to create *any* global index for searching books that wouldn't need to provide some sort of context? The utility of such an index is undeniable, and as such copyright anachronisms shouldn't impede the progress of science.

Many Google acolytes like to point out that Google already grabs much of the web in its entirety, which is copyrighted by default. That's true. But that doesn't mean it's legal. All it means is that search engines started doing this before webmasters got organized into associations (they still aren't organized), and there was no one to challenge the engines.

I bet you'd like to get rid of browser caches and those "Internet accelerators" that store copies of web pages, too, right? For heaven's sake, the web servers copy their data down the line, explicitly allowing it to be copied an almost unlimited number of times by an unknown number of routers in between the client and the server, but suddenly the host is completely limited in what and how long it can store that data? Insanity. "Property" distribution over the Internet simply does not have any rules, and way too many people like it that way for it to be stopped now. The simple fact is that information that does not allow itself to be used on the Internet will die, and be replaced by superior information. Is that what you want? A bunch of authors publishing dead trees for a slowly dwindling population of rare book collectors?

Now if webmasters had been around as long as authors, and were organized to protect their interests, the engines would have never gotten this far with their illegal crawling for profit.

If the monks and scribes had been more organized (they already were, as I recall), they could have prevented the wholesale printing for profit by the owners of printing presses. As it stands, Google could legitimately do the same job as a publisher, that is offer the entire content of written works to users on the Internet, and pay the authors some percentage of the profits they make from ads. The problem is that publishers currently have a monopoly on publishing, and generally lock the author into giving them an exlusive publishing deal for a very long time. As such, publishers have a real conflict of interest regarding the use of an author's work by Google, a potential competitor. The result is that the readers and researchers of books suffer. Most likely it will take a small revolution to change this, and if Google starts it, more power to them.

Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July

[juhaz]

Now why don't you link-farming scum ask the webmasters you claim to be representing first, and then GET THE HELL OUT OF INTERNET.

Thanks.

Can anyone give us some links here?

[cjcollier]

I'd like to know more about Google's library project. Does it infringe on any rights? They're only publishing documents that have outlived their copyright, aren't they?

Re:Can anyone give us some links here?

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't publishing anything, they are making a search engine for books. Imagine your normal google, just for books instead, and with links going to the book store instead of to a web page.

(The "cached" link is only going to appear for public domain books).

Lets be serious....

[tkrotchko]

"and as the excerpts are shown around the search results what does it take to read the entire book by crafting search queries? not much I'd think"

Well yes. And you can infringe copyrights on songs by building a random note generator and have it craft one million songs. Probably most of those random tunes would infringe somebody's copyright.

Yet, most people wouldn't not consider this a trick to get around paying for a CD.

Lets be serious for a second; books in electronic form are useful on in specific instances (search being one of them). However, you can't beat the utility and ease of use of a printed book. It runs almost forever, its not a big deal if you lose it, you can loan it to your friends, you can sell it when you're done.

I doubt that any popular author is going to be affected by this much, and if they are, it will probably be in a positive way.

The reason copyright holders fear this is because they're convinced their "I.P." is worth more than it really is. In other words, the large publishing houses think they can set up their own searches and charge money for it. Now, you and I know this isn't true and misses the point.

Then again, I think they're just trying to shake down google for a few bucks with a lawsuit, but I guess that's the American way these days. These authors would probably be better off writing another book and stop worrying about their books being indexed by Google.

Not if it's Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google is correct, and the precedents they cite apply, they don't have to opt-out anyone because it's fair use, and the copyright holder doesn't have a legal case to prevent fair use. The opt-out is really just for PR "See, if you don't trust us, you can always opt out".

Unless some whiz-bang hacker figures out how to get more than the snippet Google displays, or an unscrupulous Google or library employee starts selling/giving away digital ebooks of Google scanned copyrighted books, owners of copyrighted books would be idiots to opt out of a comprehensive book search engine like Google Library. Although, if I were a copyright holder, I'd want Google to make available counters for search hits, and actual display of page hits for my works, especially if my work was currently out of print.

Bad Dictionary!

[calyptos]

Apparently the dictionary contains the contents of thousands of books, and they just rearrange a couple words. I think we should all get together and start a class action law suite against the dictionaries of the world for illegally redistributing our work. While we're at it, lets sue them for slander. They called me a "dumb fuck bitch who eats babies on friday mornings". They were a little tricky about saying it, again some of the words were mixed up in different places, but we all know what they meant.

Google... pfft, its dictionaries we need to worry about.

Re:Bad Dictionary!

[cnerd2025]

Exactly. They swear at me every time I open a dictionary and they insult my intelligence by changing the order and adding all the extra words as filler. When will artists understand that we can't take creativity from them. If something doesn't sell, then it sucked. That's how the market reacts to other things. But with so-called "IP" the market isn't allowed to decide. Go Google!

Arriba case has very little to do w/ Google Print

[loggia]

Boy, if that's something Google is counting on, they are in trouble.

Arriba did not offer or hold the actual photograph. These were thumbnail images that linked to the owner's work.

Google will not be providing a link - they will be storing the entirety of the author's work, even in many cases when that work did not already appear in electronic form. They will be offering a service based on that person's intellectual property. When authors agree to have their included in similar databases, they receive payment for their work.

What Google is doing isn't a thumbnail; it is not fair use.

The legal way to celebrate Google's Birthday

[LoverOfJoy]

Happy _________ to you, ______ birthday to ___, Happy _______ _____ Google ______ Birthday to ____!

Re:Google Fanboism

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you did miss it (and you amazingly even got modded insightful for it) or you wouldn't have posted that at all because, the intial act of copying/installing something you do not own is what I was arguing was illegal, not the displaying of the data (I could care less whether they are displaying a screenshot or the providing of the access to the program, that wasn't the point of the example). If someone wants to make screenshots, they can't just illegally install the program to do it and claim that it is OK because they were just making screenshots to put on their website to make money off of. "Why should you be angry, I only stole your program to advertise it for you!!" - whatever

The ends does not justify the means, if Google wants to do this, they should purchase every book they intend to copy in it's entirety.

Oh goody, a lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

"What Google is doing is copyright infringement and illegal!!"

Thank god you got here.

Google was all set to break the law, but now that they have your expert opinion, they can stop.

Phew! That was close!

ermm...copyright...yeah

[N3wsByt3]

"Quoting an entire book is not fair use."

No, they quote only a small snippet of it, falling under fair use. You've said as much yourself.

they *copy* the entire book in their cache...but then again, if that is illegal, then all websearchengines are infringing, and, in fact, all ISPs that use cache... for it will all contain copyrighted material which has been copies without the 'consent' of the copyrightholder.

Such a notion would be absurd. Not that that stopped some EU MEPs from trying, but luckily common sense prevailed, and it was not deemed illegal to cache copyrighted works.

I don't know how things are in the USa, but one could hope they show the same sense.

Re:ermm...copyright...yeah

[NexusTw1n]

they *copy* the entire book in their cache

If that is allowed it legalises copyright infringement over P2P. Most P2P apps only allows you to download snippets at a time. It doesn't give you the entire file, without you making repeated requests.
That isn't what the EU meant by caching copyrighted works.

If the books were already electronic, google may have a chance, but they would be scanning the books to make them electronic - the act of photocopying an entire book rather than a couple of pages breaches EU copyright law, and the act of OCRing it would be treated the same way.

In addition, google will have a hard time claiming fair use anyway. They are an advertising company. Any use of the books is for commercial gain. And advertising companies can't just use other people's copyrighted work for commercial gain under the guise of "fair use".

If google set up the library as a completely independent trust, with a legally binding guarantee that no company including google could data mine the users, or sell ad words then they may be in with a chance. Until then "fair use" is just a smokescreen.

Re:ermm...copyright...yeah

[N3wsByt3]

"If that is allowed it legalises copyright infringement over P2P. Most P2P apps only allows you to download snippets at a time."

The courts don't all make the verdict of illegality when downloading (see the courts in France, for instance), let alone that they do it for downloading snippets. It's mainly uploading that is illegal in almost all western countries; but there too, all actual cases thusfar is for uploading songs, not snippets of song. Though, even then it would be for private use, and depending on the country, this may or may not fall under 'fair use'. In any case, as other posters already point out, under USA law, google has a good chance, since it falls under at least one, and probably more points that are needed to fall under fair use.

"but they would be scanning the books to make them electronic - the act of photocopying an entire book rather than a couple of pages breaches EU copyright law, and the act of OCRing it would be treated the same way."

That could be true. Copying pages from books on copy-machines in libraries are not deemed illegal, however, since we already pay a fee for it on blanc carriers. Could be that copying the whole book falls beyond the scope permitted, though.

"And advertising companies can't just use other people's copyrighted work for commercial gain under the guise of "fair use"."

Yes, they can, if they only use snippets. There is already an established tradition; you have numerous books which have quotes or exerpts from other books; this falls within fair use, yet those books are sold for profit none the less.

The only point of concern is if copying the whole book would fall under fair use, even if only parts are shown to users, and if it's copied in cache, or on permanent carriers (at least in EU law).

Anway, since it involves the USA, no doubt we'll have to wait untill some day the supreme court makes a decision, no doubt. ;-)

Re:Google Fanboism

[carlos_benj]

Actually you did miss it (and you amazingly even got modded insightful for it) or you wouldn't have posted that at all...

It seems you get tripped up when you start assigning motivations for what someone does....

Hmmm. Let's see.

Installing a copy that someone else gave them without paying (and without authorization) for it...

So far you'd be right. ...so they can "advertise it for the software company" and claiming it's ok because they are only letting people have access to certain sections of it.

By adding the remainder you muddied the waters. It was that portion of it that I found to be objectionable so I registerd my objection.

Your arguments aren't even internally consistent:

The ends does not justify the means, if Google wants to do this, they should purchase every book they intend to copy in it's entirety.

Technically, it's still illegal for them to copy the works in toto from a purchased copy.

Re:Google Fanboism

[carlos_benj]

(and you amazingly even got modded insightful for it)

By George, I was modded Insightful for that. Gee, thanks for the heads up. What a day brightener! If I weren't sitting I'm sure there'd be a spring in my step now.

Re:Arriba case has very little to do w/ Google Pri

[Anonymous Coward]

There could indeed be an analogous situation. Snice the Arriba case involved taking pictures and providing a thumbnail, they were providing a stripped-down version of the work and providing a link where the full version could be obtained. In the google print situation as far as I understand, they are providing a stripped-down version of the book with a link to a place where one can buy the full book. IANAL, but it seems to me the argument could be made that google is providing a "thumbnail" of the book with a link to a place to get the full version.

Fair use

[shimmin]

It's common in evaluating fair use defenses these days to apply the "four purposes" test:

(1) Effect on the market value of the work. Google can probably effectively argue that their use of the works does not adversely affect their sales. Only one sale was lost (selling the book to Google, since they borrowed and copied it rather than copying books they already owned copies of), and if anything, having the work indexed will increase the number of people exposed to the work's existence.

(2) Amount and substantiability of the work used. Google could get in trouble here, because even if they only reveal there copy a few words at a time, they copied the whole thing, and are redistributing the whole thing, if a few words at a time. There was nothing in the work that Google did not copy.

(3) Nature of the copyrighted work. The more creative a work, the smaller the range of uses considered fair use. A mere database is inelligible for copyright, and a reference work that conveys primarily factual information is easier to use fairly than a work of creative fiction. This could get hairy. One the one hand, many of the works Google proposes to copy are purely creative works. On the other, they are using them not for their creative content, but purely as data. If they can convince the court that because they have used the works as a database, and not as creative works, they have used them fairly, they have a chance. If the court sees the works principally as creative works though, this is a strike against Google.

(4) Nature of the use. Google is using the works commercially, even if they aren't getting paid. This is a strike against Google, though probably not an overriding one. However, to really win on this point, they need to make the case that putting all these books together in a big database is "transformative," and this is a hard point for them to make. While the books in the database can be used in a fashion they couldn't be used while not in the database, their appearance in that database is not transformative insofar as seeing the quote from the database adds little context to the work. It is not transformative in the sense that parody, criticism, scholarly research, etc., are transformative.

In my opinion, Google has a good fair use defense only if they can convince the court to distinguish the content of the works as creative works from the content as data, and then say they copied only the data, without infringing the creative work. It is not at all certain to me that the court would agree with such an interpretation of the law. If this makes it to trial, it is my opinion that Google faces an uphill battle.

Re:Fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

(2) Amount and substantiability of the work used. Google could get in trouble here, because even if they only reveal there copy a few words at a time, they copied the whole thing, and are redistributing the whole thing, if a few words at a time. There was nothing in the work that Google did not copy.

There is an additional problem here. What is to prevent employee X of Google from reading a book from the database (he is a database administrator) at the same time employees Y and Z are doing the same thing. This is precisely the same situation that you have if a company purchases a single copy of a book and makes it available to the entire office by scanning it into a shared database.

As much as I like the idea of Google Print and think that it would be a good thing for the authors, the above scenario is a clear copyright violation.

Re:Fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the chance that Google would/could claim copyright on the resulting compilation (or aggregation) in digital form...? This would allow Google to restrict access - authors might not be able to access w/o Google's permission, etc.

I can't see how making entire copies of works can be argued to be "legal for Google, but not legal for me".

Re:Fair use

[Godwin O'Hitler]

(2) Amount and substantiability of the work used. Google could get in trouble here, because even if they only reveal there copy a few words at a time, they copied the whole thing

But they didn't *keep* the whole thing.

From their FAQ:

6) I'm already logged in. Why are you telling me the page is unavailable?

As part of our efforts to protect a book's copyright, a set of pages in every in-copyright book will be unavailable to all users.
  (emphasis mine)

Re:Fair use

[shimmin]

That says only that they are not redistributing the whole thing, not that it isn't in the database. I rather think that it is in the database, only flagged as unavailable, awaiting the expiration of the book's copyright.

I'm already paying

[Main Gauche]

"Corporate America of course won't be happy until you pay a per-word usage fee for reading a library book."

As opposed to the good ole days, when books arrived in libraries for free?

Tax-dollar road map:
citizens' pockets --> gov't coffers --> local library budgets --> book publishers [aka "Corporate America"] --> authors

There's a bit of skimming at each step, of course, but please don't try to make it sound like we aren't already paying to read library books.

Re:I'm already paying

[Guysmiley777]

"book publishers [aka "Corporate America"] --> authors"

Unless you're working in the publishing industry, you'll have to admit that there is more than "a bit of skimming" in the "-->" between book publishers and authors, but that is beside the point.

As I've said, this service does NOT steal books or infringe copyright. It allows users to find books they are looking for so they can either check out at a library (where the books are paid for by tax dollars) or buy them.

auto copyrighting ...agreed to allow fair use

[Anonymous Coward]

By copyrighting a book, the publisher has agreed to allow fair use of the material.

Don't all works now become copywritten on creation which should mean that everything must allow for fair use?

They should be thanking google

[squidsoup]

Indexing these texts, and allowing the public to search these works, undoubtedly will create more interest in the books, and will consequently benefit the authors.

indeed

[Ender Ryan]

Indeed you are correct. And I don't see why that should be any different for Google Print, ie. they technically have complete copies of the books, just as with web pages in their index, but the courts have already ruled that in the case of web pages, even though they have full copies, even for commercial purposes, that the purpose behind having those full copies is not exploitative and constitutes fair use.

Mod parent up

[Petrushka]

Why aren't the libraries being sued?

Mod this up! This is exactly the point. Google is at most an accessory, and is acting in good faith on behalf of the libraries.

If someone gives you data and you index it online, and then it turns out that the act of giving you the data was illegal, who's broken the law? Hint: not you.

Hello... it's searchable.

[sparkz]

Did you RTFA? Can you find a way of highlighting certain text within a scan without doing OCR?

Of course they OCR the scans. They're not being "low-tech", they're providing images of the books, typesetting, images et. al. An OCR scan might be more useful to google's users, but they're setting out to provide snippets (or entire pages) of actual books. How useful is an OCR scan of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" without the pictures?!

Re:Hello... it's searchable.

[craig.hathaway]

yes, i did and i actually tried out the tool and did some looking around for Tolstoy's works. which i assumed to be outside of copyright proptection, but haven't looked into it. anyway, i was more thinking of searching the page I'm actually looking at, in the same way we CTRL-F web pages. agree with the picture books but that's a specific example and I dare say that's only very small minority of all published books. again I agree that must do some OCR to privide the search function, but then why not provide this in raw html for viewing? I'm thinking about readers of poor eye-site, babelfishing etc scanning a whole load of books is no doubt time consuming but I fail to see how this is high tech!? Surely the mass storeage requirements would be lower for text than images, not to metion browsing speed... CHeers

action now

[blackest_k]

this bunch of around 8000 authors need to be sent a message
staff@authorsguild.org
is the contact email address

Print.google.com is important for all of us because it means access to
the worlds published printed knowledge of everything (except micky mouse
of course).
Think of how valuble this could be for people researching into anything

the ability to call up the whole of mankinds published knowledge or at
least extracts from documents on any subject all the research papers.
this site could be the most important ever!

And an organisation of around 8000 people thinks they should stop google
maybe when they see thier relatives ill dying and suffering they should
remember their contribution to the pain and misery in this world.

fuckem boycott thier works refuse to acknowledge they published anything.
Let them know you are not going to buy read or acknowledge their
existance because they have contributed the smallest drop of knowledge
to humanity so I don't think we will miss them.

they must feel the negative effects of thier actions holding the worlds
knowledge hostage is a crime against humanity and this is what they are attempting.

Re:action now

[Garwulf]

Wow.

I don't think I've ever seen a comment quite like this. Authors actually standing up for their rights and demanding to be asked first is being compared to the slaughter of millions, at least from what I could understand of it. I'm still trying to figure out what "Let them know you are not going to buy read or acknowledge their existance because they have contributed the smallest drop of knowledge to humanity so I don't think we will miss them" is supposed to mean.

Honestly, look around you, and for God's sake, learn some grammar skills. We live in a society that is innundated with information. Requiring that Google actually ask the author of a work before scanning that work into their database doesn't deprive anybody of anything that isn't already available, albeit in less comprehensive form. In fact, Google's database will be considerably SMALLER than the database that university libraries already have access to (from one university library, you can look up and borrow books from any other - that's access to HUNDREDS of millions of books). Claiming that authors protecting their rights is "holding the world's knowledge hostage" is rather like claiming that you don't have enough saltwater while stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Google has committed a massive faux pas. That is what has happened here. What saddens me is that it is a worthy project, but they may have lost the goodwill of the very people who they needed to make it work, and who would have probably bent over backwards to help it if they had just been asked first. And, instead of admitting the mistake like a responsible adult, apologizing, and asking permission, Google is fighting it, and claiming that authors are standing in the way of progress. I don't know about my fellow authors, but I do know that if Google approached me about one of my future books (the two books I have out were works for hire), explained the project, and asked permission, not only would I probably say yes right away, but I would provide them with a preferred text for their database, saving them the time and effort of scanning it in. And you know what? Most of the authors I know are the sort of people who would probably do something similar.

But, you have to ask first, not just take. I just hope Google wises up soon, because with the support of the authors, their project could really soar.

Oh, and by the way, I have family who suffered during the Holocaust. Claiming that a copyright case is even close to that is not only ignorant, it's insulting to the victims who died in the horrors that are true crimes against humanity.

Re:action now

[blackest_k]

ok first I will apologise for the grammar, i use it loosely I know.

First of all I wasn't refering to any slaughter.. I was refering to the natural suffering which occurs in human life such as cancer arthritis sterility and many other things which if we are lucky happen to somebody else.

I think it is fairly obvious that many avenues of research have been explored with varying degree's of success. working in any field of research knowing what has been done before can help avoid repeating past mistakes and that older research can be reevaluated due to advances made since the original papers were published.

The prime advantage that google print has over anything in existance now is the ability to rapidly assess what has been done before. If your familiar with going through abstracts attempting to find existing work which supports your research its a long and drawn out task. (Last time I did this it took over 2 months for the articles i thought would help to arrive and even then they were barely relevant).

research papers are published as a requirement for many degree's often in very limited numbers of each paper but many thousands of them.

Is it not obvious to you that google is attempting to provide a resource that will speed up research and hopefully reduce the development time of many inventions drugs and cures that will change the quality of life for many people suffering in the world today.

In plain terms what I am saying is that with google print research and development time could be reduced and more
effective. bringing forth new drugs and inventions which
will reduce suffering in the world. you might argue that these advances will be made eventually however if that advance could be made earlier it could be the difference between a loved one dying or living and or the quality of life for them being significantly improved. at worst the advance might never be made.

Can you not see how incredible a resource having mankinds published knowledge available on your desktop is-and this is potentially what we could have with google print.

now as an author you would prefer for google to approach you and ask if you would like to be included and also it seems you have other works planned which you would also like to be asked about.

so should google ask you and millions of other authors for permission to allow the public to view extracts?

google does give you the option of saying I don't want to be included leave my works out of this so if you care enough to be bothered then simply google will not index them a simple email confirming who you are and the works in question and the world need never know you published anything through google anyway.

There are very few organisations capable of undertaking a project of this magnitude so dont expect 100's of clones of google print to popup indexing your work.

however lets look at another situation. perhaps your grandfather was a doctor and he published in his 20's a paper on a particular subject can you expect the publishing house to still have a current address for him assuming he is still alive of course where he can be contacted. Can you not see that contacting every author individually is an impossible task.

perhaps i am mistaken in believing that most people would prefer to have some good come from thier work rather than having it rot on a few shelves if preserved at all and never read.

by making google jump through hoops to satisfy a particular authors ego. your locking away a huge amount of knowledge which it would be impossible to check if their is a copyright maintained on it. I think if you want to earn some revenue on something you wrote fine just make sure your contactable.
you can quickly google for your own name to see if anythings listed for you.

if you have a legitimate claim to any work listed you can ensure their is a method in place to allow your work to be purchased. probably will be easy to tell if someone has plagarised your work too.
come to th

Re:action now

[Garwulf]

You know, if the Interlibrary loan system of the university libraries and Project Gutenberg hadn't gotten there first, you might have had a point. Unfortunately, they did, and you don't.

First of all, I never said it was a bad idea. However, and I must stress this - THE ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS. That is an ethical issue, and I honestly wish that ethics were taught in school outside of limited philosophy courses. There'd probably be a lot less of this silliness.

Second of all, contacting the authors is possible, as publishers are required under most contracts to provide them with regular information on sales figures, and royalties, if any are due. You are showing very little knowledge of publishing.

Third of all, those three "hacks" who launched the suit happen to include one award winning author and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. They are standing up for their rights. Amazing how when you're in the middle of stomping on somebody's rights it is terribly unjust for them to speak up, but God help anybody who steps on your rights.

Finally, do me a favour and never buy one of my books. I don't think I could stand the thought that I might get royalty money from somebody who considers me a worthless hack, and any actions on my part to ensure that I'm treated fairly as disgraceful. I only hope that one day you meet somebody who treats your rights the way you propose to treat mine, so that you can finally understand how it feels.

Naive

[sparkz]

If you can view more than a few pages of any one book, and you don't think it falls into one of those categories, you should submit it as a bug.

I may be rather anti-litigious, but in this situation, I think that filing a bug report isn't really the answer. I'm quite sure that legal counsel would confirm that the correct action would be to sue.

Sort of like copying a work in RAM, and/or across network devices is copying?
No, like going to a library, scanning an entire book, taking the scan back to the office, OCR'ing it all, and storing it all in a publically-accessible database is copying. Get the difference?

Re:Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, but legal counsel will also confirm that the correct action is to sue if you stub your toe.

In this case, assuming that the correctly functioning version of Google Print is legal, then suing over a bug would be idiotic.

Re:Naive

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I may be rather anti-litigious, but in this situation, I think that filing a bug report isn't really the answer. I'm quite sure that legal counsel would confirm that the correct action would be to sue.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you have no grounds for any financial compensation until after you have notified the offending party that they are violating your copyright. Otherwise, the best you can hope for is an injunction against them. So I guess it depends upon your goal.

I'm feeling lucky

[barries]

I'm just waiting for Google to release Suegle.

This elevates "I'm feeling lucky" to a whole new level.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah blah

I don't know anything about the law, but I'm a self-proclaimed internet expert who will tell you with absolute certainty about a topic that I'm unfamiliar with.

Blah blah blah

The future is scary. Horses are better than cars anyway.

Blah blah blah

Besides, I'm astroturfing.

Ridiculous

[tkrotchko]

Without search engines, the web would not be worth very much to the average person. Lets not forget that the W3C standards say opt-out and that is widely understood by anyone setting up a website. If you don't want to be indexed, its trivial to opt-out.

As to the Google book search tool, this is a terrific use of technology for the average person, its a terrific for authors because it gets people looking at their books, its good for bookstores because they sell more books, its good for google because they make money.

Google will lose

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that this certainly falls within Fair Use under U.S. copyright law.

Well, I am a lawyer. Let's see, Google makes a copy of an entire book without the copyright owner's permission. They are doing it for commercial gain. The most basic of copyright rights a copyright owner has is the right to prohibit others from making a copy without permission. There are a few exceptions from this, of which fair use is perhaps the biggest, as Google notes.

However, looking at the elements of fair use (posted by others already), I would expect that you don't have to be a lawyer to see that most of the copying Google is doing without permission is copyright infringement. The argument that Google is doing this for research or whatever is very weak. They're not, they're doing it for commercial gain plain and simple.

Doesn't matter that Google doesn't pass the whole book copy on to users, the infringing copy was already made.

I dislike the current copyright scheme as much as anybody, but I hate entities who are arrogant and think they are above the law even more.

Google has done a lot of great things, but they are on the wrong side of this one. I look forward to Google getting smacked down.

Re:Google will lose

[LuYu]

I am, of course, not a lawyer, but I know a bit about copyright law.

Unfortunately, I replied to a previous post before getting to yours, so I will have to repeat myself somewhat. On the other hand, since you are a lawyer, it will be easier to summarise my point as you are already familiar with the issues involved.

First, let me say that although I agree with your legal assessment, I disagree with your moral assessment. Whether or not Google is going to profit by its actions is irrelevant. The fact that they are going to digitize so many books should be applauded. What they have already done would take publicly funded programs decades or centuries (if it were to happen at all). If you do not believe me, just take a look at Project Gutenberg. It took them from 1970 to 2001 or 2002 to scan a mere 10,000 books. The public library systems of the world have scanned zero or close to zero (considering the number of works in the public domain, you should be asking yourself if the public libraries are doing their job at all). Google is going to manage millions in a few years. This is a good thing, whether or not you like Google personally.

Now, on to the legal issues. Technically, Google is in massive violation of copyright. Of that, there can be no question. The question is the relevancy and enforcability of those provisions in copyright law.

Technically, by the fact that you are viewing this comment, you are violating my copyrights. I have written this comment. It is stored in a fixed and tangible form. You have copied it into your computer's memory (Mai v. Peak) to view it. I have not given you written permission to view it (which, legally, is the only kind of permission that matters). In the mean time, you have also created infringers of all of the intermediary ISPs between yourself and Slashdot, so you are also liable for contributory infringement. I could sue you and win.

Why does this not happen every day? It does not happen because society has already accepted that these forms of copying are acceptable. Call them fair use. Call them your right to access the materials. Call these forms of copying whatever you want. No matter how you look at it, the Internet itself is responsible for massive (technical) copyright infringement. In fact, if copyight were enforced as the lawmakers wrote it, you could not even use the web without calling every admin and asking for a written contract before you accessed that given site.

So, the question, as I just put it is:

• Are the copying portions of copyright law still enforceable in the age of the Internet? (Or is copyright now limited to distribution only?)

As I pointed out in my earlier post, the RIAA, the current, undisputed king of copyright lawsuits does not even sue for copying. They sue for distribution. If they really wanted to, they could sue anybody with MP3s of any music over which their sponsors had rights. In fact, they could even sue anybody using a CD player because the player has to load the data into memory and convert it into an analog signal before a given person can listen to it. From the standpoint of copyright law, then, it is impossible to even listen to music without violating copyright.

In such an age, how can Google be taken to task for violating copyright in the same way that everyone does?

Re:Google will lose

[Bun]

Nowhere did I say I was a lawyer. I simply pointed out the obvious.

Technically, Google is in massive violation of copyright.

You said you are not a lawyer, so...

Technically, by the fact that you are viewing this comment, you are violating my copyrights. I have written this comment. It is stored in a fixed and tangible form. You have copied it into your computer's memory (Mai v. Peak) to view it. I have not given you written permission to view it (which, legally, is the only kind of permission that matters).

IANAL either, but I (and my lawyer girlfriend) disagree with this entirely. You are responding in a public forum. It's an 'open letter' of sorts, and as such I, or anyone else, is allowed to view, copy or respond to it. Also, and I'm not sure what Slashdot's policy on their posts is, or what we agreed to when we registered, but it may be that in posting on this forum, you are granting Slashdot the copyright on your material. One could also think of your post as a simple letter to me, where again, I have every right to copy, view and respond to it.

I do think you raise an interesting point with regards to the cached copies of copyrighted material being stored on private computers, web caches and search engines everywhere. In these cases, the nature of the technolgy of distribution does raise and interesting question with regards to the nature and meaning of 'copying'. However, I don't see how that affects anyone's fair use rights as defined under the law. They appear to be separate to me.

Eliminating Google from the Web? Art thou crazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you fail to grasp that if your position were upheld the Web would become relatively useless. Without Google or other search engines to give us some sign posts to various treasure troves we would be searching a rather large universe of sites and pages without any hint of a map. However biased Google (or for that matter any other web search engine you may wish to name) may be, without them we poor rovers of the web would never find anything except by accident. Site names are often non-explanatory or confusing, indexes may not be updated properly, links break, etc. Without search engines we're stumbling around in a luggage and filing cabinet filled basement without lights and seeing by a single candle.
Coincidently this is about the same situation as trying to find an obscure text in a major library without a central index or card catalog to guide you. A situation that Google is attempting to cure. Now I have no idea what has the Authors Guild's knickers in a twist, but apparently they must all be famous and well known writers whose works are at the front of the shelves. Those writers whose publishers did not, sadly, have enormous budgets to blow on lurid graphic covers or whose works appeal only to a limited audience would be happy to have any publicity they can get. Space on bookshelves at your local store is limited, finding a book through Amazon applies only to books in print and readership or concern for out of print or older volumes at libraries is decreasing. A search service that brings any attention to older works or provides a search function to obscure or less popular works seems to me to be one way to give the print medium a massive shot in the arm.
Having friends who are lesser known writers I can tell you that they are, to a one, solidly behind ANYTHING that will give them greater exposure to the world at large. Carried to its limits the Google project will do that. Speaking as a former collage student myself I know I would have welcomed with open arms anything that would have allowed me to obtain a greater range of written opinions on any topic that I had a research paper due on. Speaking as an avid reader who enjoys finding rare classics to this day, a search engine that might suggest to me some missing tome that I might find would assist me greatly to locate new gems for me to read.
What's not to like!
Google has allowed me to find all kinds of cool web sites to learn from (the website for the newspaper for the Antarctic research stations for example) that I would never have found on my own. I simply type in a topic and even the most obscure sites pop up. If an oddball notion seizes me I can find a dozen references on it in a moment, if my children need information on any school subject simply type it in and it's at your fingers. I know of few web designers that wouldn't want a Google listing, Far from hurting web site owners Google has been a godsend! How else would, for example, a small beekeepers site in Montana be able to advertise it's products to a wider audience, or a metal craftsman in Maine be able to give notice of his wares? Leave it to the webmasters? What elitist poppycock!
Google (and its competitors and predecessors and followers) has been the biggest boon to the web in its creation. If it can do the same for books and the written word then we will finally have achieved what Dr. Vannevar Bush intended hypertext to be (a name I was able to locate quickly and easily, by the by, by typing "History of Hypertext" into Google).

HASN'T ANYONE EVEN TRIED GOOGLE PRINT YET?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I'm screaming because why hasn't anyone even verified the article yet? Google's response was that they don't even show a full page! That's a total, utter, complete, L-I-E. They show tons of pages. Just like amazon.com. Sign up and see for yourself at print.google.com

Want some direct proof? Here is a simple example:

http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/1103/aaa9lo.gif

Re:HASN'T ANYONE EVEN TRIED GOOGLE PRINT YET?!

[julesh]

Want some direct proof? Here is a simple example:

http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/1103/aaa9lo.gif

The explanation is simple. The publisher of this book has opted in to the program to allow some pages of the book to be shown, similarly to the way that pages of the same book can be downloaded from Amazon.

For those who do not understand

[HuguesT]

OK, what is the guild complaining about ?

Try the following experiment.

Go to Google Print, search for "Image Processing Handbook", The first item is the J.C. Russ book. Click on it. This is a recent, copyrighted book.

Now search for "noise", go to page 19. You can read the book from page 17 to 21. Notice the pretty pictures.

Now look for "coarsening", a rarish word found on page 21. Select page 21, and Lo and behold you can now also read page 22 and 23. Repeat ad nauseam.

In most book a few pages are permanently blotted out, but by and large you can easily read *most* of the book.

Try the same trick with any book in Google Print, it works.

THIS goes beyond fair use. The guild has a point. They will win that case, unless Google scale back their offering dramatically, to the point where is has no value beyond what Amazon (say) offers now.

Do you understand now? Thanks.

Re:For those who do not understand

[Eustace Tilley]

You appear to be confusing Google Print and the Google Library project.

The work you mention is in Google Print only because the publisher asked for it to be. Part of the terms are

In addition, you can choose how much of your book a user will be able to view over a 30 day period, from 20% of your content up to 100%. Portions of your book will be available to all interested users, but those users wanting to browse additional pages must sign in with their Google Account to view the full pages. (They will still be restricted to the percentage of the book you choose to make available.)

From TFA:

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).

Google provides a screenshot of how an indexed excerpt looks.

Do you understand now? Thanks!

Re:For those who do not understand

[HuguesT]

Thanks for this, nonetheless:

1- Google Library scanned data ends up in Google Print so yes I did confuse the two.
2- The book I used as an example was in fact available through the publisher program, not scanned at some library, however on its publisher program page, Google states:

  You're in complete control
People will only be able to see a few pages related to their search and copy, save and print are disabled. And you can remove a book from Google Print at any time.

This is innacurate, saving a page is trivial to do, and people can in fact read most of the book, not just a few pages. Mind you I think this is excellent!

3- In spite of my example not being relevant, I still think the Guild has a leg to stand on, as photocopying/scanning a whole book for any purpose whatsoever without permission is not allowed, at least in my jurisdiction. I'd be very surprised if US Federal law is more lenient, but we'll see.

In some sense it's not even relevant what portion of the data is made available to the public. Google took a whole copy for themselves, I really can't see how that can be allowed, period.

Perhaps if they destroyed the actual copied book data but kept only the index that might be OK, but it does look like they have all the full pages on their servers.

Re:For those who do not understand

[Eustace Tilley]

Google is not taking a copy for themselves; they are acting as agents of the libraries.

Participants in Google Print can limit their book's visibility, with a minimum of 20%. Google Print is akin to browsing and is designed to present whole pages. Google Library emulates the subject, author, and title section of a card catalog and is designed to guide readers to a whole copy.

You are a fucking wanker.

[Aldric]

I'm a webmaster and most of my traffic comes through google and other search engines. It's the same for 90% of websites.

Other way around

[AttilaSz]

... merely make trees out of the book...

Wow. It used to be other way around. I'm calling the Greenpeace to ask Google to donate the technology for turning books into trees to them. Then all we have to do is send all junk literature to Amazonas, and presto -- rain forests saved! I'm eagerly awaiting worldpeace.google.com shortly after this one.

Clarification

[the phantom]

I was not responding to Google's case, only his statement that you could not copy portions of a friend's book for fair use reasons. His logic was that you could own and copy a book, or borrow a book and not make copies (again, for fair use reasons, which Google's may or may not be). I simply stated that if you were making copies for fair use reasons, it doesn't matter if it is your book or someone else's. Again, I don't think this has any bearing on Google's case.

Re:Clarification

[Fallingcow]

Ah, ok. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!

[Anonymous Coward]

CopyRIGHTED.
Repeat after me: CopyRIGHTED.
Jesus Christ, people can't spell worth shit.

Trees, books, copyrights, exerpts, and spelling

[some guy I know]

make trees out of the book

In Soviet Russia, people make books out of trees.
Wait, they do that here in the US, too.

display exerpts of ANY book

If that's the case, then I will be able to reconstruct the entire book on my machine by using a series of searches.
I predict that programs to do this automatically will begin to appear shortly after Google goes public with its Library Project.

P.S. It's spelled "legal".