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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"); }
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.
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.
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.
Okay, that satire is quite interesting. But let's be careful. Hopefully the law is not quite that blind. Google's database is used for searching and indexing. Now, if google employees start reading those books, then basically google is breaking the rules: they are allowing full copies to be distributed to some people. But if google only allows snippets to be available to the public, and internally there is no abuse, then this is fair.
In the satire, the guy who makes copies, what does he do with them? If he truly offers an indexing service, and doesn't redistribute the movies (or whatever) to others, then yes, indeed he is covered by fair use and should be protected (in my opinion) just as google should. If he watches those movies or even lets his friends watch those movies, that's still okay. Fair use says you can make small numbers of copies for personal use, show a movie to your friend, etc. What you cannot do is make a large number of copies or distribute entire copies in any way. As long as the guy in the satire doesn't do this (as long as google doesn't allow anyone to read full copies), then everything is fair and okay.
The point is that this satire ignores that ultimately a judge (who is a human, not a computer) will take a look at the case and make an informed decision. The question will be "what was the intent of the action?" and "what was the result of the action?" If the answers are "they intended to index data for a search engine" and "people found out about copyrighted works they could buy" then the judge should say "it's legal." If the answers are, instead, "the guy clearly wanted copies of movies for personal viewing" and "he let people watch these copies" then the judge should say "that's not legal."
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.
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.
If I write a book and tell Amazon they can't sell it, they can't.
Hold on. You think if you write a book and get it printed, you decide who can and can't sell it? Since when? Ok, maybe you have control over who gets the books straight out of the printing house, but once they hit the secondhand market, you really think you can say "Nope, sorry, you can't sell my book."? Maybe amazon will humour you and honour it, but I seriuosly doubt they have to.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl