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

Intellectual Property FUD

[It doesn't come easy]

Either what Google is doing is allowed by copyright law, or it's not. The courts will decide, the losers will appeal, and eventually we will have a final ruling. Personally, I think a searchable index might just boost sales of lesser known books (considering that the mainstream bookstores only carry the most "popular" books and if you're not carried by the Barnes & Nobles, et al, you don't have much chance to become known to most of the population).

Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions.

[Jerk City Troll]

I hear there are places where there are shelves after shelves of books, conveniently organized for quick reference, all at the disposal of the public, free of charge. What's more, these places, sometimes called "libraries", will even let you photocopy any of the material you find there for only the cost of the copy machine! Just imagine how much creativity is being stifled by these rackets! If we hope to save our society from the menace of intellectual property theft, we should be shutting them down, and not allowing Google start doing the same!

You are confusing two issues

[Darius Jedburgh]

There are two issues here: whether or not Google is breaching fair use, and whether or not they are enabling Google users to breach fair use. By providing only snippets Google are encouraging end users to make fair use of texts. But the question of whether or not Google is breaching copyright does not hinge on what their end users do. The fact is: in order to make available snippets to end users they hold entire copies of the original works. So let me spell this out clearly: Google hold copies of original works. They use these entire copies to serve up snippets to individual users. By serving up snippets they are able to make sales of advertising. Therefore Google are using entire copies of copyrighted material for commercial benefit. This is so far from fair use it's not debatable. So Google are clearly in breach of copyright even though the end users aren't. I can't spell it out more simply than that. The only reason Google have survived this far is that they have encouraged confusion, in the eyes of onlookers, between the notion of fair use by the end user and the notion of fair use by themselves.

I'll spell this out even more clearly. I have written book X recently. They have an entire copy of my book sitting on their servers. (It may in fact be an index and hence a derivative work from which the complete original can be constructed, but that is still subject to copyright.) They are using their complete copy of X to make profit. I don't see a penny of this except maybe occasionally someone will buy my book X because Google mentioned it. And there's certain no law that compels me to accept free advertising in recompense for abuse of my copyright.

Re:You are confusing two issues

[bitingduck]

By serving up snippets they are able to make sales of advertising. Therefore Google are using entire copies of copyrighted material for commercial benefit. This is so far from fair use it's not debatable.

Yes, it is debatable. They aren't republishing the entire book.

If their potentially infringing use decreases the value of the original (i.e. makes a user of gBooks not want to get a copy of the original) then it's probably infringing. If their use increases the likelihood that someone will want to get the original, then it's probably not infringing.

Book reviews depend on this-- they excerpt things all the time without needing permission. The whole point of book reviews is to help evaluate whether you want to get a book or not. They also make a profit from republishing snippets, but it's certainly not infringing. Authors don't see a penny of that unless it encourages someone to go out and buy the book.

What Google is doing is providing customized excerpts based on what you're looking for. In all probability it will increase sales for books that it indexes-- there are plenty of times that I haven't bought a book online because I couldn't tell if it included what I wanted. Then I check it out in person at a bookstore if it's available. If it's not, then I just don't buy it.

And as a side note, bookstores already provide a service that allows you to do what people are afraid Google will enable, and possibly for less effort. If you're a reasonably quick reader it's not hard to read an entire book (or at least as much as you want) in a single bookstore visit. There are plenty of books that I've read in the bookstore that I didn't buy.

Making full copies may be irrelevant- libraries routinely make full copies of damaged books that are out of print in order to preserve their content.

Copyright wasn't intended to give authors absolute control over the ability to profit from their content. It strikes a balance (at least it used to) between protecting authors' ability to profit and the benefit to society of having things made publicly available.

I'll spell this out even more clearly. I have written book X recently...[lots of stuff cut out for space]... And there's certain no law that compels me to accept free advertising in recompense for abuse of my copyright.

Ok, so suppose your Book X is on the shelf at the library and I decide to read it there and write a review of it. I pull out a couple of excerpts and include them in the review. I sell this review to some book of reviews, who then publish it with ads. They and I have both profited from your book, and you don't see a penny (except from the single sale to the library). That's free advertising for your book, and there's nothing you can say or do about it- it falls under fair use. I can even say your book sucks in the review, and it's still fair use.

In fact, I just did something like that in this post-- if you read "The Fine Print" at the top of all the replies, all your comments belong to you. I just excerpted your copyrighted material (I could even have fairly included the whole thing, but it would have been annoying for other readers) to write a negative review of it, and Slashdot profits from it.