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The Point of Google Print

Posted by Zonk on from the lookie-loos dept.

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.'"

2 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Re:rational of opposing google print? by schon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 business case is simple:

    "It's my football."

    I've talked to a publisher about something similar, and his attitude was "I don't care if it will make me more money - if I want it indexed, I will do it myself, so I can charge for it. I don't want anyone but me making money by providing a service for my products, even if it's a service I can't or won't provide myself."

    They don't care about more money, all they care about is control.

  2. Piracy vs. Obscurity by Brett+Johnson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.