Reining in Google

CDPatten writes "The Washington Times has an op-ed piece by two writers typically on opposing sides of the isle, Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr. The article is brief, but overwhelmingly opposes the Google Print service. From the article 'Not only is Google trying to rewrite copyright law, it is also crushing creativity ...Google envisions a world in which all content is free; and of course, it controls the portal through which Internet user's access that content. It would completely devalue everyone else's property and massively increase the value of its own.'. It sounds to me like they might be slightly peeved that Google is resuming the scanning.

Comments

Re:Indexing or Caching?

[Zacha]

Not originally. At first, things like the New York Times were cached and able to be searched; that is, the articles they were trying to make people pay for. The NYT asked Google to take those pages down.

And for books, Google Print scans books for which the copyright has already expired.
No. That's the Yahoo and Microsoft versions. Google will scan copyrighted books without explicit permission. See this article, by way of example.

"The Google project ... includes both public domain works and printed materials under copyright, although it would handle and display these two differently.
...
The OCA [Open Content Alliance] will seek to digitize all public domain works, but only copyright material for which they gain explicit consent from the publisher. Made up of Google competitors Yahoo! and the Microsoft Network (MSN)"

Re:I'm more confused than ever

[swillden]

It is really quite simple. You are allowed to copy copyrighted works all you want. What is illegal is either selling or giving those copies to someone else. There is a "fair use" exception that lets you use short snippets for review purposes.

That sounds very nice, but it's not true, at least in the US. According to section 106 of title 17 of the US Code:

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

Per the bolded bits, only the copyright owner has the legal right to make copies. Now, there are a whole bunch of exceptions to that, including Fair Use (section 107), reproduction by libraries (section 108), and a bunch of others.

You can take a book of your shelf, rip it apart, create 5000 copies. All perfectly legal as long as you don't give/sell those copies.

No, I'm pretty sure it is illegal for you to make those copies. Of course, if you don't give them away or sell them the publisher (a) won't have any reason to sue you for it and (b) wouldn't be able to get anything from you if they did sue you, because you made no profit. Historically, copyright infringement has been a civil issue, and although your copies infringe the copyrights, there is no loss over which the copyright holder can sue.

As of a few years ago, copyright infringement became a criminal offense, and the 5000 copies you mention would seem to meet the requirements for the criminal statute (section 506). Again, though, if you didn't do anything with the copies other than store them in your basement, there's no way for the authorities to find out you've broken the law, and really no reason for them to bother even if they do find out.