Slashdot Mirror
The Point of Google Print
vinohradska writes "Eric Schmidt has written a good article called the The point of Google Print. It clearly lays out the argument against the current lawsuit: 'Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use. If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages.'"
This is about control. I guess I didn't notice the corporate copyright lawyer trawling the library taking photographs of the card catalog, which is an index of books in the library's holdings. Of course our library doesn't *have* a card catalog any more; it has an online search utility. Funny that didn't get mentioned in the lawsuit.
Who cares if Google has copied every book ever printed. As long as the copyrights of the author and publisher are honored (they don't give copies away for free), the who cares? If I took every book off the shelf from my library, copied them, and then took the copies home and stuffed them in my garage, who would care? That constitutes 'fair use'. But if I start making more copies and giving them away, or give my copy away, now I should be held to account.
The publishers are just ticked because they see themselves losing control over content. Meet the new RIAA.
Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use. If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages.
Is Schmidt the only one who gets the webpage angle? I would beat the publishers over the head with this one. What do you want to bet that they all have copyrighted webpages indexed on Google. Did they ever protest this fact?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages
Do they really want copyright holders thinking about whether search engines violate copyright law?
Aside from law issues, I don't see the business case against opposing google print. Could the net effect be anything else but higher sales due to the amount of people who will find just the right book when searching through google?
The only reason I could see is strategy: the publishers are afraid that google print could be _so_ successful that it gains power against them, ultimately maybe even replace them and directly connect authors and publishers and providing a print-on-demand service. A situation not unlike Apple vs. The Record Companies.
Fleur de Sel
even used google print? You can barely see any of the book, just the "about" page in the beginning. This service is used to DISCOVER books. If millions of people can search and find the book they have been looking for, and they happen to buy it off of amazon let's say, why in hell would they sue Google. THIS WILL ONLY HELP PUBLISHING COMPANIES SELL MORE BOOKS.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
If the copyright is lost who cares. Well, Disney perhaps.
I love these projects which OCRs old books where the copyright is no longer active. As for new books, I think it is a bad idea unless the author gave his permission.
Hmmm. I smell Google at $100/share!
On the merits, as regards the web, Google benefits from the de facto system of "opt out" via robots.txt files. There is nothing comparable in book publishing.
I don't claim to know much about copyright law, but doesn't this fall directly under fair use? Although fair is a pretty ambiguous term, I think sensible people can tell what is and isn't.
And how is this different than regular web google showing portions of the website (which tends to be copyright) on the search results page? Authors must opt-out of this (via robots.txt) yet no one has been screeching about that at all.
In fact, google archives entire pages for public viewing, with their cache service. They don't allow entire books to be viewed through google, like they do with websites.
So I'll restate my subject: Why is this even an issue?
C17H21NO4
I'd love to see the oldest chinese editions (or as close to as possible) of Sun Tsu's The Art of War side by side with english translations and annotations. I'm sure there are lots of other people out there who feel similarly about thousands of other publications.
Not really going to happen till we as a society[1] get comfortable with the idea of books being available online from sites like Google.
I'll bet the Project Gutenberg people are jealous of the resources. Go for it Google, an astoundingly huge but very very worthy task.
[1] corporations, politicians, lawyers, the general public.
Deleted
Whether you nerds like it or not, Google is public, and profit is its God.
The fuzzy feeling you have inside will evaporate in just a few years.
This is just the latest example of Google taking from others and "giving" it away for a profit.
Open your eyes, you socialist monkeys.
it's called the constitution, and it gives authors control over their work so that they may profit, inventors too. Eric should read it sometime. If someone plagiarizes your work online, they can be held accountable through the legal system(if you so desire). If you tell a search engine not to index your page, they can't legally index your content, and that is why google so vigorously removes sites that request (as rare as it may be) to "opt out".
Authors have told Google not to copy/index their books. Plain and simple. I don't know why Google has the notion that they know better then the creator of the content, regardless of their intent. The arrogance is remarkable, and almost surpasses Big Bill's. And it really doesn't matter if google says (or even would) increase the book sales, if the author says no, its NO. If I write a book and tell Amazon they can't sell it, they can't. Same principle applies to Google.
This is article is a billionaire boys temper tantrum.
Perhaps Google should sort of teach the publishers a lesson and drop all existence of their companies from all Google searches in fear of copyright violations. The publishers would complain saying that no one could find their pages, but Google will just retort saying, "Well we wanted to make sure you won't sue us over copyrighted material, if you want back, then let us index your books too."
SOME use of books, particularly books in reference libraries, is PRECISELY to find quotable snippets.
The old days:
I'm making a speech and I need a nice quote.
I remember a partial quote and look it up in a quotation-reference book and while I am in the library, look up the original source material to see if there is anything more I can use. The library paid for all the resources I am using, and while I am using that particular copy nobody else can use it. If I like the book, I buy it.
The Google way:
I search for the quote, find the source with enough context to be useful, and I'm done. If I need more context, I go to the library or buy the book. FOR MANY SEARCHERS, THE PUBLISHERS RECEIVE ZERO RENUMERATION.
The Library's preferred way:
Same as Google's way except publishers get paid somehow.
The open question is this:
Just how much money, if any, will Google's way cost compared to the traditional way? Maybe it will even EARN publishers MORE money since searchers won't be "in the library" where it's easy to access a "free" copy - they may just click to theirfavoritebookstore.com or drive to their nearest bookseller.
What the publishers are afraid of:
Nominally, the publishers are afraid they will lose substatial revenue. My guess is this particular incident is pretty much a wash and not worth fighting over and most publishers secretly know it, BUT it may set precedent for things we can't yet forsee. As one of the first repliers suggested, this is all about control - who if anyone gets to set up the toll bridges.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This case will never make it to trial.
I assume that you know that attourneys & the courts serve only the wealthy & connected few. They exist to keep the rest of us down. If I were writing the search engine, it would have been taken down by DMCA notices day one. Only a rich company like Google can compete against a rich company like Perfect 10.
Trial by pocketbook, togeather with the trampling of the Bill of Rights, makes our "government" illegal. Some of us have known this for quite some time, and have been preparing for the revolution for years. The rest of you have either caught on, or are too stupid to deserve to live.
The revolution is coming in the next year. It will be a pleasure to hunt down the attourneys, hiding in basements, and exterminate them.
Andy Out!
His fair use argument will be very difficult to make indeed if he's making money off it -- and that can be interpreted VERY broadly. Is his plan pure altruism, or is he using the content as a traffic magnet, for ad sales, etcetera?
and the summary's VCR analogy? Lame. Home VCRs are personal use, which this isn't, and not for financial gain, which this is.
Schmidt is just trying to win in the court of public opinion a battle that can't be won in the courts, and hoping publishers will go along before he gets to the litigation stage.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Publishers don't like it because they want a cut of whatever it is Google get out of it. Google won't give them that though. It's just greed. Plus the opt-out that Google offer isn't satisfactory because publishers realise that if they opt out, then anyone who doesn't will have a competitive advantage. So they all sue Google together.
Google have been on dubious legal ground for a long time, the Google Cache you mentioned being among the main points of contention. Google Groups and Google Image Search have also come in for criticism before.
What amazes me is that there hasn't yet been a major lawsuit against someone like Google or the Wayback Machine. It's hard to see how it isn't an open-and-shut case - we're not talking about some specially-exempted public interest service run by the government, remember - and some of their activities could cause very real damage to someone if things worked out unfortunately for them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If I buy a new gadget and discover that it fails to meet my needs or expectations, I can return it, not so with books movies or music, If I cant return something, then you better beleave that I am going to be damn sure that I know what I am getting when I purtchase it.
Google print, Amazon book search, this lawsuit and others are just small steps in the evolution of copyright into something else. I don't think we can anticipate what that will be, any more than our ancestors anticipated a day when making and distributing copies of information would be as easy as talking. In the time it's taken me to type this message I could have sent the lifetime works of Benjamin Franklin to someone on the other side of the world. Not just his published writings, but every single word he ever wrote down. It's ludicrous to think that our ancestors would have formulated copyright in the same way if they had known what we know, or that copyright shouldn't evolve like everything else.
Do you really think you can stop Amazon or any other bookstore from selling a book? I could see stopping someone from publishing a book because you're the copyright holder, but once it's published, I can't imagine a way to stop those copies from being sold and resold wherever, short of making everyone you sell the book to sign a licensing agreement that gives you that control.
Also from the article: "...We find it difficult to believe that authors will stop writing books because Google Print makes them easier to find, or that publishers will stop selling books because Google Print might increase their sales. ..."
First, authors will never stop writing books, even if Google would be the only authority doint whatever it wanted.
Second, who sais that Google will increase sales for publishers for sure? It might well be that Google Print just takes over much control, attention, and last but first: advertising bucks.
Ahh and I thought there might not be a google article on slashdot today, silly me.
As for new books, I think it is a bad idea unless the author gave his permission.
So what's the effective method to locate authors or other copyright owners in order to seek permission?
Google supposedly does no evil.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here's a fairly funny satire about Google Print:
http://www.vortex.com/reality/2005-10-23
It argues that you can copy anything you want-- as long as you promise to index it and put the index on the web. Then you can keep the text around and do what you will. If anyone gives you a hard time, come up with some inane opt-out policy with a real nasty bureaucracy and blame them for being uncool.
I hate to say it, but this satire convinced me that Google is pretty sleezy. The creators are getting nothing and a bunch of guys who happen to build a few automated indexers are multibillionaires. I'm happy to reward innovation, but this is nutty.
This is really about control, and what they can get around. I really hope they are able to do this.. I think it will benefit allot of people.
The only way this comment has something to do with the story is it's copyright related. I guess it could be interesting.
Anyways, I run a karaoke show a few nights a week. For those that aren't familiar with karaoke, most of it is produced in a format called CDG. It's exactly the same as a regular audio CD, but the subcode section that is normally set aside for seeking and disk position has a few extra bits crammed onto it for the graphic display.
Fair use is there for audio CD's. We're allowed to copy them for backup or playback on an ipod. Because karaoke CDG's contain the lyrical video element, they are not considered purely an "Audio" CD.
http://www.ipjustice.org/karaokefairuse.shtml There is an article on IP justice that theorizes copying your own legitimate karaoke CDG's is legal. On the other end of the spectrum there is KAPA http://www.karaokeantipiracyagency.com/ who is trying to outlaw folks from copying their CDG's to their hard drives.
The place I work at, it was sort of a needed evil. Our DKK set of karaoke CDG's was over 10 years old, and DKK no longer produces CDG's. There was no way for us to get a replacement set at all. Through 10 years of use, the CDG's were damn near unusable, prompting us to spend a week using a disk doctor to polish up and recover what we could, and transfer them to the computer in mp3+g format.
I've been doing this since 2001, before that I was a sysadmin for 10 years or so. I read slash religiously so I'm pretty well informed from the multitude of YRO articles on copyright, as well as software licesning issues. I maintain a strict no piracy policy at the club because I know what could happen if we were found to be pirating.
I don't really care about googles copyright issues. As much as we all love google, personally I find what they're doing to be in the gray area of copyright. My issue with karaoke CDG's is something personal, and I hope other slashdotters can give me some advice or insight into anything that can be done so there is a clear definition in law that personal backup of ones CDG's is fair use, and covered under fair use laws.
--toqer
So suppose it's a close call, because there is no precedent in copyright law that exactly anticipates this sort of search capacity. One option for a judge would be to try to bend some precedent to fit the case, but I think that would be wrong to do here. You see, nobody thinks that copyright law is supposed to mirror anything like moral law. This isn't like murder or perjury. Copyright laws exist only for the purpose of their good consequences. We allow people to own copyrights and patents only to encourage them to produce good stuff by making sure they will be financially rewarded for that stuff. The good consequence of this system is (supposed to be) that it provides us with more good stuff. That is its only justification.
Because of this, I think decisions about copyright should not take the original laws as sacred, on the level of moral laws, and instead maintain the pragmatic spirit of the original laws themselves. When we're unsure about precedents, we should ask: Which ruling would have the better consequences? And I think it's clear for reasons outlined by Schmidt that allowing Google to go on will have better consequences for researchers (obviously), but also for publishers, because it's free advertising. This will disproportionately benefit small, specialty presses who don't have the means to get the word out about what's in their books. This should be reason enough to allow Google to continue.
Of course, they might turn evil at some later time, or (gasp) unveil a revenue model to make back all the money they spent on scanning. But this is the sort of this that companies should be encouraged to do for money. They really are improving the lives of people through their work, without taking anything away.
Authors must opt-out of this (via robots.txt) yet no one has been screeching about that at all. [...] So I'll restate my subject: Why is this even an issue?
Because so many major publishers have said to Google regarding works that the publishers control:
"[The US Constitution] gives authors control over their work so that they may profit, inventors too."
Actually, it gives Congress the power to give authors control over their work for a limited time. Congress is not obligated to grant such rights. If Congress wanted to, it could force all new works into the public domain immediately.
"Authors have told Google not to copy/index their books."
It's not the authors themselves, but the associations the authors belong to. It's not clear if those societies have the legal authority to act on the author's behalf in this case - that's for a court to decide.
"if the author says no, its NO."
Morally this is true, legally this is iffy. Authors do not have the right to bar you from using their works if the use is "fair use." It's up to a court to determine if Google's use is "fair use" or not. I suspect that if Google were offering ONLY an indexing service, without letting people see the context, it would without question be fair use. That is, if I searched "to be or not to be" and Google replied "Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1" then it would be fair use to do this with copyrighted books also, EVEN THOUGH GOOGLE HAS TO MAKE A COPY TO GENERATE THE INDEX USED BY THE SEARCH ENGINE.
The difficulty comes in because Google is planning on showing snippets to the searcher. The bigger the snippets, the more likely Google is to run into hot water.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
My local new-bookstore lets me return books in new-unbroken-spine condition for store credit.
I'm sure they keep track to prevent over-use.
The local used-book/music/software-store has a generous return-for-store-credit policy. I think hey keep track too.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes they did, when the library bought the book, as did the author.
True, but that's one copy for every county in every state of the United States that wants to grant its residents access to the book. Google Print, on the other hand, obtains only one copy and uses it worldwide.
This misses the point of fair use. If you write a book, fair use allows several (albeit restricted) uses regardless of your property rights in the expressive work your created. The question is therefore not at all whether your copyright is absolute (i.e., no other uses than exactly what you say allowed) but how far fair use (uses the government allows despite the property rights granted to you as author) can go. It can certainly allow a professor to excerpt a fairly significant part of your book for criticism, for instance. Shortly, your criticism misses the point because it incorrectly presumes absolute authorial control when the issue is actually about how far an extant exception to full authorial control goes.
Another bit to note is that it is relatively well accepted that the Copyright Clause is there not for the sole benefit of authors, but for the sole benefit of the public (see Feist). Benefitting authors furthers this goal due to the incentives that strong property rights create, but that benefit is ultimately incidental, though important.
Isn't the whole point of letting people find and discover books is for them to be able to buy what they find useful? (book piracy crowd apart, most people still *buy* real books from publishing houses.)
Business-wise, this will help publishing houses ultimately. They are going to lose some hypothetical control over who gets to see their books' indexes, and who all get to know what is inside a book without flipping it over a book store. But then, how does that matter if books still sell, and probably sell more because of this?
Seems Google's claim is legitimate. Mainly to publish a book still means to generate a book in print. Who knows in the coming few years, publishing mainly means to come up with the articles in the Internet on the e-paper?
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to Association of American Publishers publishers don't have a problem with Google indexing their books but they have do a problem with Google making "mak[ing] millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers". Sure, it's great that Google are indexing books but you'll see that Google Print includes sponsored links, why should Google make money in advertising without giving the authors a cut?
There is no god but Google and GTalk is the messenger of Google.
Many authors do support the service. They just don't get as much attention. For one example, see Download Squad's article: http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/123400072006450 7/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Tim O'Reilly made an excellent point in support of Google Print when he
pointed out that the biggest threat to authors is not piracy, but obscurity.
Think of all the libraries that will need only 1 copy or better yet 1 copy per city or library system under the Google way. That represents a small but measurable amount of lost revenue for publishers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why would i read half a book then click a "buy link" and buy the book? if i had the time/money i would have bought it to start with, books should be free, id rather have no books at all, then a half a book
The idea that a company can just stand up and say "We're going to break the law as we feel like it and authors that object must write to us and say so. If we don't hear from you we'll assume we have permission to steal your work. Thanks." is insane.
What the hell is wrong with people that they think it's okay for big companies to re-write the law to fit their business model?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Google search - index, copy (cache) others' web content and make it easily available to the world, without giving a rat's ass about someone's privacy, copyright or other valid concerns.
Google earth - take high resolution images of the entire planet and make it easily available to the world, without giving a rat's ass about privacy or national security.
Google email - go through user's emails to show relevant ads to them. Rat's ass about privacy..
Google print - scan and digitize books and make them available to the world, without giving a rat's ass about someone's copyright.
Google's ENTIRE REVENUE is due to DATA OWNED BY SOMEONE ELSE. Recently, at a Google tech talk on campus, Google employees were talking about how the biggest thing at Google is 'data analysis'. Yeah, but...er..it's not your fuckin data, Google !
Their goal is to 'organize the world's information', that won't be a problem if they have the permission from the people/organizations whose info they want to organize. Damn you Google, for profiteering from other people's data, without their consent. "Don't be evil", what a joke, you are the most evil tech company around these days...
Also, how many Google products are open source ? Lets see...NONE ! If the Google Web Server (GWS) is built on Linux, Apache, etc...why not make it open source ? The Google Summer of Code was an eyewash, fact remains Google has TAKEN from the OSS community but not GIVEN BACK.
Fuck you Google.
- from a slashdot loving, MS hating, geekboy CS student.
Study the history of our current Constitution.
It was drafted without authorization. The drafters were only authorized to ammend the then-current Articles of Confederation.
Technically, as each state adopted the Constitution they were rebelling against the government under the 1783 Articles of Confederation.
Of course, since most of the people in the Confederation government approved of the new constitution those voices that objected such as Rhode Island's were ignored, drowned out, or silenced.
It's all politics.
Copyright is supposed to be a deal - the state protects the author's rights to exploit their creation, for a period of time in return for the public good that their creation will provide. Somewhere along the line it has been warped into some weird concept of absolute ownership for all time - and that doesn't serve society. Copyright should be a limited time offer. Never mind Google doing the scanning - anyone wanting Copyright protection should be handing a copy in electronic format across to the national libraries of the nation granting that right. I.
What happens when the copyright owner has not kept the records are not up to date, and the copyright in a work has been bought and sold so many times it looks like a money laundering operation? Most countries don't have a national copyright registry; what happens when the work in question was first published outside the United States?
Sure they have!
n/m
Thing of it this way: say google decided to exclude all the books published by the publishers who are complaining. You still have tons of books referenced. Referenced by what is probably the largest search engine in the world. Now, imagine all the students and researchers in the world, trying to write papers, how many of them are likely to hit google at the start of a project looking for books on their subjects? Assuming a percent of these people buy the books suggested by their google searching, my question becomes this: how likely is it those publishing fucktards decide to try and take some legal action against google for excluding them?
That may be one of their fears, that their marketing will become less valuable when people can search for themselves to find books that interest them, but I would say that would be an unreasonable fear. Consumers often enough become interested in new books because of the promotion, and not because they already cared enough about the subject matter to actively search for it. Else they'd just browse shelves (or online categories).
The indexing, then, would be most useful to people who are actively searching for particular information that may not be captured in titles, reviews, or descriptions, meeting a need that isn't currently met by publishers' marketing. So it seems to me this project should augment rather than replace that marketing. One allows people to find what they're already looking for while the other introduces it to people who wouldn't have been looking for it otherwise.
The ABE (http://www.abebooks.com/) is a searchable inventory of a gazillion independent bookstores world wide.
If Google Print tells you the book exists, you can go to ABE and find it in some bookshop in New Zealand, and order it with your credit card. I've used ABE to buy books that are out of print on several occasions.
Now, if Google integrated their Print search with ABE, then the "buy it now" could be buying it from that rare bookseller in the middle of nowhere.
This kicks all kinds of ass.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Eric's comments in the op-ed are insightful, but he appears to have missed the point of the lawsuit.
Lawsuits like the ones facing Google aren't intended to win on their merit. They are designed as bargaining tools. They create fear, uncertainty and doubt. And in the unlikely case that they actually end up going all the way to a verdict (which, through some miracle, might go the way of the plantifs), there are always rounds of appeals.
The US needs tort reform immediately, to put an end to the abuse of our legal system for PR campaigns, intimidation, stock market manipulation, delaying of the inevitable, etc.
Sadly, it will take the majority of *corporations* complaining for those reforms to happen.
- as the author of more than 20 books about Linux, i have mixed feelings about Google's proposed indexing...
- Linux has been very good to me, and i have done OK writing books... i love Linux dearly...
- but i'm no lover of technical book publishers (most are pretty evil), and i despise Amazon's offering of a 'used' book one-click right next to a new book purchase... this screws authors of royalties on new titles (think about it: you land a contract to write your first book, and amazon undercuts sales of all your hard work)...
- technical book writing is the business of repetition and revision; authors don't make a whole lot of money without a big 'push' by the publisher...
- btw, floor space in brick-and-mortar booksellers is PURCHASED, not done because a title may be good...
- there were numerous times when my publisher included PDF versions of my books with Linux distros without my consent and without renumeration... (i had to call them and 'gently' remind them - in several cases, signing an agreement well after the product had been created, printed, and distributed - in one instance i only found out by visiting a local CompUSA and seeing the product on the shelf!)...
- my books have been pirated all over the Internet... in fact, today, i can find PDFs of most of my books, even those out of print, anywhere in the world... Usenet is another source (for many new books as well)...
- i'm finished as a technical book writer (it's time to move on) and i'm disillusioned with the publishing business...
- but i fear for renumeration rights of future technical writers and authors... it's no way to make a living, trust me...
- despite all this, i still support Google's indexing and think it's a good idea...
The first lawsuit filed against Google's plan to scan books is by The Authors Guild and three authors who are described by their press release (http://www.authorsguild.org/news/sues_google_citi ng.htm) as follows:
"Herbert Mitgang, a former New York Times editorial writer and the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books, including "The Fiery Trial: A Life of Lincoln," published by Viking Press; Betty Miles, the award-winning author of many works for children and young adults, and the co-author of "Just Think," published by Alfred A. Knopf; and Daniel Hoffman, the author and editor of many volumes of poetry, translation, and literary criticism, including "Barbarous Knowledge: Myth in the Poetry of Yeats, Graves and Muir" and "Striking the Stones," both published by Oxford University Press. Mr. Hoffman was the 1973-74 Poet Laureate of the United States."
As accomplished as those three authors are, they are nowhere near being household names, and one can only speculate two possible reasons why they're opposed to Google's effort: 1) they think people will stop buying their books once the books are turned into digital form and made available in the wild cyber frontier; 2) or just the opposite -- they think their books are so precious that they don't want people to find out about them on the Internet. This paranoia about new technology by some authors (here I emphasize "some", because many writers, including this one, do not mind having their books scanned by Google Print program) is really puzzling.
The commercial reality is this: Google can stop this scanning program right now, and it will continue to make money, and lots of money, in other areas. I believe Google's sincerity when it says it does this to help a student in Bangladesh to locate a hard-to-find book. Clearly, some writers, including the three mentioned above, do not think it's important for their books to be discovered by a diligent student in Bangladesh.
Sun and Fun
What truly frightens the publishers, I think, is the potential for Google to put them entirely out of business. If you can find any book you want through Google, then the next logical step is to buy the books directly from Google. The major publishers clearly see their potential obsolescence and will fight it with every dirty trick at their disposal.
It's the same for Apple and the record companies. It's too late to kill Apple and iTunes, but if the record companies recover control over the online prices of their songs, they will maintain their power over the music industry.
... proponents of Digital Rights Management. I never ceases to amaze me that otherwise sane people, who wants to have rights to their works and therefore is opposed to DRM and other infringements on this right happily ignores this if it is packaged in a shiny enough product. Sheesh people! If you support this, they will have won!
It doesn't matter if the publisher doesn't like someone making a profit "with their books." The fact is this happens all the time. Cliff's Notes make money. Teaching people to read can make money. Helping people with writing papers makes money. Providing summaries of the latest business books makes money. Teaching and consulting make money. All of these things could not exist without the books, and some of them are directly derivative of the books. Publisher's can't do anything about it, haven't tried to, and they shouldn't be able to stop Google.
This is a "if a tree falls" kind of question. If a copy is technically made, but is unavailable, is it really infringement? Purists can say yes, but the only reason there *is* any law against copying is because of the presumption of harm-- that those copies are shared or used. This is emphatically not the case with Google Print.
It's time for publishers to suck it up and start embracing some news models of information dissemination and discovery. The funny thing is they will ultimately profit. Worst case scenario is that this has no impact on a publisher. Even the most modest case means an increase in attention and sales. At no cost to them. Hopefully they'll figure it out before they buy enough Congressional reps to pull a Disney and rob us of yet another potentially valuable resource.
Recording the TV show to watch it later is personal use, it's not for profit, and it has no effect on the commercial value of the show. That's why it's eligible for fair use. Google Print is not personal use, is for profit, and may have an effect on the commercial value of the book.
IIRC, there are special exceptions written into the U.S. copyright laws (maybe part of the DMCA?) for caching and indexing of internet content, and they don't apply to books.
Look, all this stuff was worked out as a hodgepodge of political compromises. Just because we'd like Google Print to be fair use, or we think it would be cool for copyright law to be more logical, or we think the balance of copyright law to be more in favor of the commons, ... etc ... etc ... that doesn't mean the law really is that way.
Find free books.
The authors have the right to determine who makes copies of their materials. It's really that simple. Google wants to make a copy - not an index like a card catalog - a COPY and therefore they have to acquire the right to make that copy from the rights holder.
Eric Schmidt is trying to expand the definition of "fair use" which is admirable, however, there's still the issue of making a COPY of the document.
Eric also tries to make the argument that Google doesn't gain commercially from such copying because they don't show ads on those pages. That is a specious argument because it does not count the commercial gain in the Google brand by offering such a service in the first place.
Google's got to grow up a bit. Copyright law is not pretty, not perfect and will change in the future, but even Google's not big enough to change law that has been expanded since the Statute of Anne in the 1490's. That's 500 years of copyright law to you and me.
I'm not saying Google Library is fair use, the only way we'll know for sure is when the courts rule on it. There is a precedent for fair use where a search engine copied the full work in order to substantially less than the full work to be delivered to the user of the search engine. But if it is fair use, then Google doesn't need to ask permission, and if they're using an opt-out system, it's only for PR reasons. Eric Schmidt's article is not a legal defense, but it's a PR piece to try to explain how the Google Library project works, and why it's good for the public at large.
IANAL, but I don't think copyright works the way you claim. For example, I think you're confusing the right to choose who publishes your work with the right to choose who sells copies of the published work. The owner of a copy of a book does not need permission to resell it. Since taping a TV program for personal use and rewatching it at home has been classified as fair use, you don't need permission from the copyright owner to do it.
There are 4 points that the court uses to determine fair use. One is the extent of the copying, another is the nature of the use, and another is the effect of the use on the marketability of the work. So, even though Google is copying the entire work, the other points, like the fact that returning 2-3 line snippets for copyrighted works will not adversely affect the markets for the works, may be the more important points for the court.
The Google Library lawsuits are really about 3 things. On the face of it, it is to determine if it is about whether this is a form of fair use. But it's also about the copyright holders (Author's Guild lawsuit) trying to get a cut of the ad revenue on the Google Print search results page, and it's about the publishers suing to make sure that Google Print doesn't somehow turn into something some sort of on-line viewing system or on-demand printing system that makes the publishers obsolete.
If I buy a new gadget and discover that it fails to meet my needs or expectations, I can return it, not so with books movies or music, If I cant return something, then you better beleave that I am going to be damn sure that I know what I am getting when I purchase it.
Actually that's not true, certainly not with books, unless you buy from a particularly poor bookstore. The bookstores I shop at are happy to accept a returned book if the spine is not broken (no crease marks down the spine) and presuming it is in good condition. I have learned to read books cover to cover without creasing the spine, so should I ever feel disappointed by a book I can always take it back to the store and get my cash back. The worst I have ever experienced is a store that would only give me store credit instead of cash - which isn't so bad considering the amount of books I buy.
For the most part I don't really have any issues, because I generally only buy books I want to keep, but every now and then (like The DaVinci Code for instance) I have finished a book and taken it straight back to the store for a cash refund. This never presents problems.
Jedidiah.
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It says:
'Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use. If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages.'
That makes no sense, whatsoever. The sentences are mutually exclusive but used in a way to make them inclusive. This makes sense:
'Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use.' If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages.
I think many publishers are ambivalent about Google Print, I know there's at least one author upset because her publisher won't put her book into Google Print. However, I think that if Google attempted to drop a publisher from Google Print in retribution for not allowing them to use their books in Google Library, they'd be sued, and I think that all the major publishers would pull out of Google Print. After all, from their perspective, they were doing OK before Google Print, and most of them, the real reason for joining Google Print is probably because their competitors did, and they don't want to be missing out from a potential advertising venue that their competitors are using (and a low cost one, to boot).
Don't forget, publishers only care about books that are in print. Google Library doesn't help the publisher if the book is out of print, and may even be detrimental, if a person decides to find a copy of an out of print book instead of buying one that's in print.
That's illegal in the US too, unless the court finds it to be fair use. In the US, there are 4 criteria used to determine fair use, and the amount copied is only one of them. If Google made the copies, and distributed the copies to employees, that would clearly be in violation too. However, there is precedent, Kelly v. Arriba, where Arriba copied copyrighted images in order to create thumbnails in a web search image, and that was classified as fair use. We don't know that the court will rule the same in the Google lawsuits, but I suspect that Google wouldn't have launched Google Library if there hadn't been this precedent.
AAP thinks that the probability of winning the case is p. C is the expected cost (the negative revenue) of the lawsuit, and R is the expected positive revenue which AAP get in case of winning.
p is very small, but R is huge compared with (the absolute value of) C. AAP calculates pR+(1-p)C and sees that it's far greater than 0.
AAP sues Google. End of story.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Publishers do this because Google Print does what publishers are supposed to do: making the book known.
The thing is that Google may very well end up doing it better
I don't know about anyone else, but I've found google print and amazon's look inside to be very useful. If I'm reading a scholarly book that is indexed by either service, it is a great resource to be able to search for a single word. It's much more complete than any index in the back of a book. You can see if the author ever uses a certain word, or when. Even if it is a word or phrase in the index in the back of the book, the search gives you a sentence or two of context so you can see if the use of the word is relevent to what you're looking for. If every book was searchable I would be thrilled.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I read the summary several times, then went looking for someone else that already said what I wanted to post.. I was stunned to have to scroll down a few pages to see it.
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
I am all for Google's "Library" even if it's illegal some how by today's current standards.
In my view, Google is creating a library for a community, our community, the net community.
At least someone's taking the responsibility for preparing the ultimate catalog, and doing it for apparently little "renumeration". I think there is hardly any grounds for stopping Google for doing this. The simple fact is that they are protecting (or willing to protect) copyrighted works on behalf of the copyright holders.
Consider the primary use case: I'm a library. I purchase a book. I make a copy of that book so the original does not get damaged, and I put that book on loan. I assist the copyright holder by protecting that book if they don't want it seen by my audience, but I let people know the book exists in my card catalog and the library itself. Someday, I might decide to let people view my private library in exchange for a membership fee, perhaps even doing what a Movie Rental place might do, where books/movies of all kinds can be kept, preserved, catalogued and checked out for a period of time. Considering how long it would take to create a library as large (or larger) as the Library of Congress, I'm glad Google's starting now. If public libraries want to eventually charge admission (i.e. New York Public Library) then this only validates that intention. Heck, in a sense they already charge admission in order to check out books, it's called a library card, and the library system where I live charges $15 for your first card. Again, something that is akin to what Google may yet do.
Personally I don't care what google does as long as they A) Give their community access at the community's convenience, even if it's a paid community. and B) Continue to make their "card catalog" and "public domain" documents open and published. They are not laying claim to currently copyrighted works, so that's a good thing and perfectly acceptable. If I find out they're going to one day try and lay claim to an open book by saying "Well, we're the only ones making it available so therefore it's ours", then we'll have words.
Until then, keep doing what you're doing Google. It's nice to see a corporation at least practicing a mostly open policy and they will get my business more than anyone trying to derail that process.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
If it's a songbook, poetry book, or book of modern-day fortune-cookie fortunes, a snippet may contain an entire song, poem, or fortune.
If the particular song or whatever is individually copyrighted, which is typically the case, then making the entire thing available is not as likely to be fair use as if it were a novel.
Google needs to be very careful not to give entire "individual entities" from "collective works" if those individual items are under copyright.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use. If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages.
I think the better analogy is that you couldn't, as a reviewer, read the entire book and then choose a few pithy quotes to represent the book. This is close to what Google is doing. The only difference is that Google has the advantage of knowing what aspect of the book interests the reader whereas the reviewer has to make a guess based on their knowledge of their audience. A difference which I don't believe should affect fair-use.
Wrong, wrong, wrongitty wrong!
As an Australian law graduate, let me put you right on some mistakes you've made here and also propose some alternate arguments:
'This is an opt-OUT program. Fundamentally, this is flawed. I mean even webpage search engines are opt-in.'
Nope, submitting your website/page just means it gets indexed faster. Most search-engines worth their salt go out and actively look for pages. You can opt *out* by putting a simple instruction in your robots.txt file instructing the search-engine spider to bugger off. Opt-out, this is the dominant paradigm on the web. I think it's time it were extended to all IP regimes. It's important to note that historically copyright was a *very* limited set of rights. Now the assumption has shifted to 'you can't do anything unless the copyright holder lets you, here's a few token exceptions...'. Bad for society, and because copyright holders are generally short-sighted, often bad for them too.
'Since they are not gaining permission from the publisher (or copyright holder), and it is debatable whether the program falls under the Australian Copyright Act provisions for permissable reproduction, storage and retrieval,'
Yep, gotta agree with you on that one. But since the Australian Copyright Act regime also forbids me from ripping my CDs to my freakin iPod, I think the law's broke not the intent, which seems to be the main thrust of your argument.
'the whole Australian section of the project is under a legal cloud. '
More complicated than is implied here. No books are being scanned in Australia (see list of libraries on Google's Print site). As has been shown by numerous cases in Australia, the US, France, Germany, and god only knows how many other countries, it is hideously difficult to agree on which jurisdictional laws govern information accessible on the Internet. See cases involving Yahoo, Joseph Gutnik, etc (too lazy to find you the links). I doubt any type of injunctive relief granted in Oz will have much impact anyway: most books are published by the local arm of an international publisher, and if they manage to get a legal restrait on this project, we'll have more problems than missing a few authors from an unknown publisher (sorry to be harsh, but it's true)
'The real reason that publishers have to pursue this, even if it is ascertained that the program IS legal, is that copyright can be reneged if you are not seen to be defending your rights. It sets a precedent'
WRONG FSCKING WRONG!!! Reading shit like this makes me want to be physically violent at times. Stop spreading it!! Trademarks can be revoked unless you defend them against misuse. This actually *shock horror* makes sense for trademarks: if you don't care that your business name is being used by all and sundry, then it loses its association with your products/services, and there's no reason a court should enforce it against one particular person you don't like.
COPYRIGHT IS NOT TRADEMARK LAW. Just for future reference, Patents and Designs are also different. They are governed by different Acts, they have different intentions, and they are different. As stupid as the idea is, I'm almost attempted to agree with RMS that we should stop using the term 'intellectual property'. People are very clearly confused by it.
'Google, if you're reading this, how about just making it opt-in? That'll solve all the issues, and we can all still benefit from this amazingly ambitious project.'
sk0pe, if you're reading this, hire a freaking IP lawyer for your publishing house. Discuss with someone who knows something about anything how you could use this to your advantage. As an unknown publisher, I'm guessing you aren't getting prime bookshelf space in book stores. Hey presto! Google Print, the great equaliser. If you've got a book on a topic someone's interested in, people are more likely to find it. This technology thing is really neato eh?
(I really don't know why I had to be so aggresive there, apologies, but people talking out their arse about law really does piss me off).
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will! - Antonio Gramsci.
It's simple. Google Print helps publishers market books that are in print, and they can opt-out any book that goes out of print. Google Library, on the other hand, encourages book searchers to seek out books that are out of print from used book sellers or libraries. Why would a publisher be in favour of this? An author, on the other hand, may be interested in Google Library, because it could be used to introduce searchers to their work, and give them an idea of whether there's a market for republication. Publishers don't care if any particular book has a marginal republication market, because they've got plenty of books in their pipeline, and in most cases, new books sell better than reprints.
They have nothing against Google Print, it's an opt-in program. It's Google Library they oppose. Part of it is control, but part is because Google Library will point searchers to out of print books they can find at a library or used bookseller. That does the publisher no good, they only are interested in searchers being able to find texts from books in print, so that they will be potential buyers.
So according to this suit...remembering stuff from a book and quoting it in speech or articles or books is unfair use...because reading the whole book and to quote randomly is unfair use...because that's what google is doing...but using a computer to do it !
Still in beta.
Are you thick in the head? Google will crawl your pages unasked if anyone links to them, as will every other major search engine, and if you want them to stop you need to put up a robots.txt file. Why should books be any different?
U.S. War Crimes blog. Email for free Mandriva support.
People are accusing the publishers of launching this suit to protect their market but most are ignoring the fact that this is a cynical grab by Google for the future electronic book market. Google is going to have the world's largest collection of digital books, including out of print works that are hard for people to track down (but easy via Google).
I think electronic book sales will be a wonderful thing for authors, in the same way that electronic distribution can be a very good thing for musicians and independent film makers. But that doesn't give Google the right to take the market by force by violating existing laws and failing to obtain the permission of existing copyright holders. If I had a book published I would not want Google to come along and take a complete copy of it without permission. Fair use in relation to books does not stretch to making a complete copy of them. If you want to use the book (whether for your own enjoyment/research or to TELL OTHER PEOPLE WHAT IS IN IT) you must make use of a copy that has been paid for on terms acceptable to the author.
Authors authorise publishers to make print copies of their books on the understanding that print copies are single instances of the work. If Google wants different rights from the authors (i.e. the right to copy the book once and make money from it in perpetuity by indexing it) then they should negotiate with authors and probably pay them.
I think the Slashdot crowd's love of anything that looks like information freedom is blinding them to the underlying fox-in-the-henhouse character of Google's attempt to hijack online publishing.
Remember the RIAA had a lot of cash left over because they couldn't find the artists to whom the money belonged to? Now, there are a lot more books out there. So how are google going to ask for an opt-in? What's wrong with "we'll index all books, if you don't want yours there, let us know and we'll remove all named books by you".
If the copyright owner isn't bothered enough to look, why should google?
Not only Google can build their own ABE around Google print,
they can also expand it to include individual sellers, ebay style.
I have 10 books I no longer need, I log in to GooglesuperABE,
list my books and the prices I want and forget about it.
A year later perhaps, an e-mail informs that I have a buyer.
A tree is saved, I make some money and somebody gets the book
she is looking for at a great price.
As much as I support the idea of indexing all books, these two arguments claimed by Eric Smith just don't hold. The problem is that there are good reasons that "fair use" differs depending on how you initially made the information available:
1. It is ok to record an entire tv program for personal use - it was broad cast to the public. However, it is not acceptable to broad cast the recorded program again, this is not for personal use.
2. While webpages are not broad cast as a tv programs they are published to be freely accessible. The web builds on linking accross pages and sites from the very birth, so it is reasonable to argue that you should have known before hand.
However, one thing is linking another is copying entire sites or pages. To provide the context in which a keyword appears in a given page, google must actually have the entire page stored. That may not constitute fair use - in particular because the copying is not for personal use but for commercial use.
For books, these are not made freely available anywhere in any form. Copying entire books for any use - even if only an extract is shown to the user - does not constitute fair use. In fact, at least in Europe, it is not considered fair use to borrow and copy a book for personal use, just as you are not allowed to copy a music cd. It is only within fair use if you restrict to copying a limited extract of the book.
Giving opt-out for tampering with others rights is never acceptable - as much as we dislike sites that require you to opt-out of their commercial e-mails - google should not require authors to opt-out. They should opt-in.
Now Googles strong arguments are the benefit for the general public, in particular for the advancement of science and education, and in particular in 3rd world countries where access to litterature is limited and expensive. And the fact that by making litterature findable, otherwise lost works that constitutes part of our cultural heritage would remain lost.
If Google can argue for the benefit of the general public at the minimal cost of the copyright holders, then Google may be able to make it through.
Don't write such disposable crap and then you don't have to worry about a flooded used market. Let me guess...SAMS...QUE...???
28 years? You do know that there are a lot of people in the media business working for 50 years now, don't you? Even here in Brasil, most of our TV pioneers (the ones that didn't do drugs to death, mostly) are still alive. Damn, only one of our 1980's rock stars is dead (the rest is alive and kicking, Rolling Stones style), and there are plenty of "bossa nova" (1960's) guys around... Mind you, I do think 25/35 years is enough for copyright protection, but not because it's the "work expectancy" of an author.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
So why doesn't Google implement some kind of "check-in/check-out" feature like a library, where only X numbers of digital copies can be checked-out at a given time? Maybe the publishers are in cahoots with the oil cartels: they want you to burn gas and drive to the library to get a copy of the book you could have gotten on-line. ;)
Do you mean the search would respond with something like "There were 427 matches but I can only reveal 423 of them because I have previously revealed 4 to another user who has not yet lost interest."
How do you check out a snippet?
Who cares about snippets? Screw the whole snippet idea. My point is why can't Google become a digital library if they purchase digital copies of the book and loan them out? Why can we only do that with paper books? Why should a digital library be perceived as a copywrite violator when a paper brick-and-mortar library is not? It is understood the technology to limit digital copies isn't quite perfect, but Google's got the worth (they were, briefly, worth $100 billion last week) and the brainiacs to possibly come up with a solution.
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How does this needs to be explained to the /. crowd in order to make it clear?
I don't know, but I will try.
It does not matter how unworkable is for Google to implement an opt-in scheme. The law is not to be obeyed only when it is "workable" to do so.
If you are copying somebody else's work and you are profiteering from it (because Google is going to make money out of it) it stands to reason that Google has to ask permission to do so. Since the system will be the panacea for all publishers and authors (according to Google and its unconditional apologists) then people will camp for days outside the Google campus in order to opt-in to this scheme.
As in regards to the obscure title not included in the daabase: tough! They have not received the right to copy it, they just should keep their diry hands out of it. Why is this so difficult to understand?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... in this case, copyrights, are so blantantly violated, you are being screwed over, no matter if you stand to make a profit.
It is like if somebody kidnaps you, forces you to go into prostitution and then gives you a cut of the earnings. Most likely you will not even care to look at how much money you have "made" because your rights (freedom, personaly safety, etc) have been trampled.
Google are literally pillaging the rights of other people taking the incredible stand of requesting people opting out of their forced scheme!
How much more arrogant can you get?
This is of Microsoftsquean egotistical proportions, maybe all the people that Google has poached from MS are beginning to have an influence in how this company attempts to make "bussiness"....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... the value of advertisment and name recognition.
Google has a commercial interest on its name being sinonymous with searching, and evene if they never ever charged for this ervice in any shape or form, it certainly would add to their brand reputation.
They are not a non for profit organization of any kind. If they are doing all this from the good of their hearts then they need to start a non for profit organization where Google gets mentioned in an obscure page with many thanks. And the scheme should be opt-in, they have got no right to impose it into copyright holders.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But many people, me included, do not see where the word "fair" comes into place when a company, arrogantly, uses the work of other people to pedal their own enterprises (do not tell me they are doing this as an act of charity, and even in that case, thsy still would need copyright holders' permission as far as I am concerned).
/.ers keep defending the indefensible.
It is so evidently unfair that I don't understand why so many
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are rights that are yours to use, no matter if you harm yourself in the process.
If obscurity is the punishment for using your rights let the market decide (thus copyright holders would flock to opt in to the Google scheme. Oh wait, they are forced to opt in, damn, bad luck for the little guy I guess). Google should not be the final arbiter about this. Theyr are not their books, it should not be up to them to make profit of of copies of them, even if that would bring untold riches to the copyright holders.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What most people decry is the RIAA suing people without any evidence of worngdoing. They are acting like a protection racket.
They have the rights to protect the copyrighted works for which the hold the copyright.
What is not admisable is for them to try to shutdown P2P networks that have perfectly legitimate uses, or to intimidate pople as "examples" only because they can't afford to defend themselves in a coyurt.
If the RIAA was suing egregious copyright violators I think nobody would be complaining about them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... from copying material proteted by copyright. Without asking the copyright holders.
I just don't understand how some people can't see the "small" conflict of interests araising from this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.