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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.
I don't see any difference between what Google are doing here and what they do to index web sites.
The roam the web - they take local copies of every web page - they index those pages - then they display a 'snippet' of the page in response to a search query.
Same deal with the books. Scan them into a private archive, index the archive - display the title and a sentence or two of content to provide context. I see no problem with that.
What is problematic (both with the Web indexing and Book indexing) is the Google 'cache' - where you can get the content of the web page from Googles cache if the original web page is missing or slow. That is (in my opinion) a breach of the Web page owner's copyright - and would be a breech of the book's copyright too.
However, the indexing service that Google (and others) provide for the Web is the only thing that makes the Internet useful. Doing that for books would be of HUGE benefit to mankind and absolutely must be allowed - even if copyright law has to be changed to make it happen.
Let's think carefully about the 'Google cache' thing though - that's dubious because it allows people access to content without going through the content provider's access mechanisms. That's the thing that deprives the author of value. Indexing actually increases the value of a work because it allows people to find it - and therefore increases the pool of potential purchasers by an enormous factor.
Google indexing should be the savior of printed media and authors should support it.
Google caching is morally dubious.
www.sjbaker.org
Wait a minute. Are these guys saying that Google is some sort... BUSINESS?! Good god!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. The Washington Times != The Washington Post. One is a bastion of DC journalism. The other is only slightly better than a tabloid.
2. Let Google scan. Let me search. Only by having Google's (or someone's) index available will I be able to easily find a book I never knew existed. The Dewey Decimal System's got nothing on full text indexing.
Who wants to start posting Barr and Schroeder's voting records?
Or does their objection to doing it "unilaterally" merely mean "our old colleages aren't getting their cut"?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I think copyright law needs to be changed anyway. Things are getting ridiculous. Perhaps not eliminate copyright altogether but put a single term limit on copyright of any work, 15 or 20 years and once that term is up, the work becomes public domain. I am 100% for google's scanning project. Go Google!
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).
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I love it when they intentionally steer away from the whole idea of indexing books. Why am I not surprised?
For those who may not be aware, their objective is not to have the entire book available on the internet because it won't be or shouldn't be. They'll have enough of the book (whatever that is) to help you find the name/author/etc of the book then tell you where to find the book. (Amazon, library)
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
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!
Join Tor today!
If Google crushes copyright law, and in that proces makes all content free, than the value of all other content will go down, but the value of Google will not go up. With a sufficiently crushed copyright law under which you can copy everything (to a certain extent), nothing will stop another company (lets say Yahoo, or Microsoft) to do the same, and have the same information available, maybe even by copying it from Google.
It just sounds to me that they are afraid of change. Creativity does not by definition depend on money. Why would there be thousands of art blogs, musicians, and writers who just publish it all for free. Some of them are really good, or even mainstream and could sell, but the commercial copyright industry just has no interest since they already have a few others, and profit margins would just go down when you add one more.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
As opposed to what lobbyists have done, rewriting copyright laws (extending them infinitely) and crushing creativity (you so much as write something similar to us and we release the lawyers)?
We can only hope, for the good of all society, that this day comes soon.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Good grief. Google's not making the works available. They're just making them searchable. The TV taping isn't a good analogy from either viewpoint as the television show will be watched in whole. What Google makes available would be akin to watching a one minute clip of the television show.
I was going to argue against it stifling creativity, but I guess paranoia would keep you from writing new works as it's hard to type while running from imaginary enemies.
The article claims Google has not defined what a "snippet" is. They go on to ask if it's a paragraph, a page or even a chapter..... This is willful ignorance as Google has provided examples of what a snippet will look like. Best to ignore what's out there so we can create the monster to look the way we want it to.....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
"The creators and owners of these copyrighted works will not be compensated, nor has Google defined what a "snippet" is: a paragraph? A page? A chapter? A whole book?
.. on this, we can both agree: These lawsuits are needed to halt theft of intellectual property. To see it any other way is intellectually dishonest.
This is the better point of the article: who said that Google gets to decide what's fair use? It can't just be Google's say so, court decisions aside. Nor just the balance of opinion on the web.
I admire Google's robust approach to copyright - that it's better to try things first, find out if you're right second. It's a very cool company. But it's not elected and it is straying into the area of other people's copyrights... be it for good reason, or otherwise.
This is the more unsettling point in the article. In the same vein: why do Schroeder and Barr get to decide what is fair use? To point out the problem, reasonably, is something the article does very well until right near the end. These last few paragraphs stray unsettlingly into RIAA languge, be it intentionally or otherwise.
I do believe in Copyrights (that alone may get this modded down to -255). However, if google lives up to the claim they will only provide snippets, how is that different than what any web site, quoting an author does. Is this web site in violation Dilbert -why you are wrong by quoting from Dilbert? It appears fair use to me.
Where google may have issues, is if anyone figures out a way to reconstruct a book in total. They would give people like this a lot of ammunition against them. Of course, the library does not prevent me from scanning a book if I take it home, but that is something that will be missed in the hype around it. I am not sure how they could prevent this, but these are some pretty smart guys.
In this case, the authors sound more like they want a cut of the click through, regardless of sales. What may be interesting in the end is book sellers would be the most likely to advertise on Google Print. A "click here to buy this book" type of link.
And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.
It sucks when another company comes along and try and change the rules. It's ok when you do it though huh?
Let's see as I understand it. You look for certain phrases through searching books scanned in on google. It finds those books and displays a page or so of the text (probably less). So you know what you searching for is actually found. Then you can if you want, now see if you can keep up, buy the book.
Wow the authors and publishers really loose out. I see what they mean. Why would you want to sell more books? Google must be stopped!
Didn't amazon do something like this already? Well at least a few pages of the book.
If I write a novel, and put on the floor in the street, somebody picks it up and reads it, they arn't violating copyright because they haven't create a copy.
If I write the same novel and leave it on a public file server, if someone picks it up and reads it or saves it to disk they have made a copy of it (because thats how digital reading works) so they have violated copyright, unless I allow them the right to make one copy. So what happens the next time I open the file? Technically I'll have a copy on disk and a copy in memory - so I'll have two copies. Or worse, I decide I want to read it on a different computer, I copy it to the other computer, delete from the current computer and then read it on the other computer. As far as I'm concerned there is still only one copy, but in reality there are three: the copy marked for deletion on my harddrive, the copy on the other computers harddrive and the copy in memory. All this before we start getting our knickers in a twist about caching and registers!
Digital data really stuggles with copyright, because even the most simple of actions require that the data be duplicated, and the reason we duplicate over transfer is because it's faster and safer. Once something is digitized good luck trying to keep control over its distribution.
Googles actions here show a complete disregard for conventional copoyright. Taking a none digital medium and transcoding it to digital, then disitributing it on the web is not what fair use had in mind, and really should involve giving some money to the copyright holders, probably a lot of money.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
1. The Washington Times != The Washington Post. One is a bastion of DC journalism. The other is only slightly better than a tabloid.
Uh, I wouldn't even say the Washington Times is that good even.
It was founded by the Moonies, which is IMHO, a cult and certainly not an uncontroversial organization by any other standards.
Add to that the fact that it was explicitly created by Moon to create an 'alternative' to the Post that was more in line with his own opinions. Which is just a wonderful premise to start a quality newspaper on. Not.
(Not that there's anything wrong with op-eds. But if it's the raison d'etre of your paper, I wouldn't call it a 'newspaper'.)
Ok, but enough shooting the messenger.. The actual op-ed piece speaks for itself. It's a load of baloney. Filled with a nonsense interpretation of copyright law, tons of statements and allegations without any arguments or reasoning to back them up.
And more than a few straw-men like: "Our laws say if you wish to copy someone's work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that."
Google wants to abolish copyright laws. Riiight. (sarcasm)
From the EFF analysis:
Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used: Favors Google. Google appears to be copying only as much as necessary (if you are enabling full-text searching, you need the full text), and only tiny snippets are made publicly accessible. Once again, Google looks a lot more like Arriba Soft than MP3.com.
They may only be providing snippets, but they're copying the whole damn thing.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
If we'd had a "Napster of books" that blew the doors off of print like it did for music, publishers would be beyond this now. I know the RIAA/MPAA take the stance that P2P has had a negative effect on the music/movies biz, but with the massive success of the iPod/iTMS/[insert favorite online music store] does anyone really beleive that anymore?
She is not on the "opposing side" of anything except common decency. Pat sold her soul to the publishing industry years ago. She's the public face of the anti-library movement that would love to eliminate print ownership entirely and switch to a pay-per-read model.
Claiming that Pat Schroeder still holds true to any of her former progressive Democratic views is like saying Arianna Huffington is still a Republican.
As the publishing companies have an abysmal record of preserving the heritage; they leave it to libraries. History is full of important libraries that have burned with all its content.
The argument that these people use is ONLY about copyright and how they THINK they might be worse off in this deal. Their reasoning is not at all why this is a good thing for the society and they do not even consider how it will benefit themselves.
It is a well known but little understood fact that people who go to libraries are the ones most likely to buy books. It is as little understood that file sharers are the ones most likely to buy records.. You do not need to stretch your imagination to understand that when books are known courtesy of this program, that people will be interested in copies these often out of print books.
Please wake up, you are robbing yourself when you spout this nonsence.
Thanks,
GerardM
Dumb and Dumber, as far as I'm concerned. Did you ever see her on "Jeopardy", when she failed to come up with basic answers about the US government? Did you ever wonder why he so strongly opposed the will of the people that he wrote (and got passed) legislation to circumvent even PLACING a referendum on legalizing marijuana on the ballot? I don't want to hear or see what these two have to say, it simply brings down the general level of human discourse.
Two wastes of horseflesh, they are.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
they index the content of websites/books and provide it for a cost; a side advertisement that is related. They are not claiming to do it for mankind, even though it is a clear benefit.
Within a few years (if it has not happened already) Google's advertising revenue will dwarf all domestic newspaper ad revenues.
And your point is?????? News media over the last 5 years have become lapdogs and no longer do their jobs (report esp on politicians). So instead, BLOGGERS have really been replacing newspaper as a major source of info, not google. Google is actually helping newspaper via news.google.com.
Is this unchecked growth a good thing?And why is it not? If you can do it better, than do so. Google shows innovative capitalism at its best. They not only have done innovative work, but have continued to do so. They do not have a monopoly, but even they do, it is natural (as opposed to MS's which was/is an illegally aquired and maintained).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Bob Barr: very conservative Republican
Voting Record on Issues 2000
Pat Schroeder: Democrat; pro-copyright, but also pro-access to information
http://www.iastate.edu/~cccatt/p%20schroeder.html
Wikipedia
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was passed by a voice vote in both houses of Congress. Pusillanimous toads, the lot of them. So no, you don't know how your Congresscritter voted.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Creativity is more obviously crushed by the idea that you should use your creativity to make money. Some examples:
Creativity isn't quashed by making content free. The potential for making money from being creative is reduced by making content free. There are millions of people who enjoy being creative for creativity's sake and not for money-making. Look at all the bands that have supported free downloading of their MP3s etc.
Huge big budget creative projects (e.g. War of the Worlds) couldn't afford to be produced with out profiting from ticket-sales etc....but free content doesn't prevent them from doing so -- it just reduces their potential profit (from DVD sales etc.).
So maybe, if the potential for profit from creative-works were reduced (e.g. by making content more free), then the Big Companies would butt-out a little bit and let people be creative for creativity's sake!
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.
Tabloid is a term of size, or physical format. It has nothing to do with content. Not having seen the paper in question, I can't say which it is, but, for instance, The New York Times is a broadsheet, and The New York Post is a tabloid.
...on their web site...
But who are we to say that for someone else's material?
It's very easy to take the public-spirited view in any intellectual property debate, be it on copyright or patents or whatever. Allowing anyone to control access to or use of information is (almost) always against the public interest in any isolated case and once the information has already been published. But you have to consider the bigger picture, which is why concepts like copyright exist in law.
Personally, I agree with the original reply that started this subthread: things like Google Cache and the Wayback Machine are on very dubious ground, both legally and ethically. It isn't a no-brainer that these caching systems are of benefit to the original creators of the material. I've enumerated some reasons that I believe this before, but probably the three most important are:
Caching/archival services disrupt all of these things, potentially damaging the interests of the content provider. Those interests are protected by copyright to encourage them to offer the content to the public in the first place, and thus I have a problem with violating the letter and/or spirit of copyright law to set up a cache. If you want to offer such a service, by all means do, but make it opt-in; "You can just disable it with robots.txt/by e-mailing us at.../by setting up a password" really isn't good enough.
Although commercial entities can be killed off by the unfortunate side effects of dubious caching, this isn't automatically a money issue, either. For example, I help to run a relatively large web site for a local club, and we rely on server logs to see which links visitors do and don't follow and which pages they want to get to from which other pages. We use this information to improve the links and menus on our site. We have no commercial stake here; this is a non-profit organisation, providing the site purely to help our members and anyone else with common interests. However, if everyone started seeing our site indirectly via Google Cache or whatever, we couldn't do this because our server logs would be empty, and therefore we couldn't continue to update our site to better provide for our visitors.
We also update our content regularly, sometimes even providing information in an afternoon that's relevant only to the same evening. Yes, we make mistakes occasionally too, and have to fix them. Having a cache that's out of date by even a couple of hours could spoil a whole evening for one of our members who missed a last-minute announcement or saw cached data that was copied while there was a mistake on the site that had since been fixed.
None of this is in either our interests or that of our members/random visitors interested in our stuff, and there's not a single financial consideration in any of the above problems. So no, Google Cache isn't automatically serving the interests of either the copyright holder or the general public, and more to the point, it's not up to them to decide what's in the best interests of others and whether it's OK to break the law on that basis.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There is a funny thing about those libraries - They actually had to buy or have all of those books donated. That is one of the things the Carnegie institute does. It helps libraries purchase and keep there books up to date.
Another thing about libraries - Only ONE person can take a book out at a time or even use it to do the research. Now if a library has multiple copies of a book because it is popular then multiple people can do that.
Also as for copying, the libraries I have gone to always have those nice little signs that say photocopying a book is wrong and should not be done. Hmmmm I wonder why, maybe because they are protecthing themself from copyright lawsuits.
So please do not tell me that Google and the libraries are the same.
Ken
So, now how do I get paid for writing this post? I don't? All right, that's it! ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
It is WE who like our sites scanned, and if not, we add a Robots.txt file.
I'd just like to mention, adding a robots.txt is an opt out scheme. Google indexes all the internet that people don't specifically request they do not. Legally, they do not even have to respect the robots.txt, they do so to generate good will. It would be prohibitively expensive to contact every website operator and get permission in advance.
The same holds true for books as well. It is just too expensive to ask every copyright holder, and many copyright holders are completely obscured. Authors die, publishing houses go out of business. Technically, someone owns the copy rights, but no one really knows who.
All (most) books say have on them, in print, right in the beginning a text saying "copying of material from this book is not allowed unless permitted, prior, in writing, by the author or the publisher".
Which means jack and shit since it is not formatted in such a way as to be machine readable, like the robots.txt and since it is not legally binding. Fair use means Google can index them in order to recreate a excerpt and children can copy a paragraph for their book report. They could but in a clause that says "you agree to pay me $1 for every letter in this book you read." It means nothing.
And authors have little ability to "check the web logs" and see who scans their books.
Neither do web users since it is easy to forge said information.
Fair use dictates that google links to our sites directly.
What the hell are you taking about? The fair use doctrine says no such thing.
Not only that, but internet has shaped to be mostly a free and open medium. Books - not. Books, you have to buy, or at least subscribe to a library (paid, directly or indirectly). Different "market".
The internet is not free. A good chunk is free, and a good chunk is paid for by ads, but then pay-to-view porn sites make up about a third as well. All three of these models apply to print as well.
Basically, from doing a little research it is pretty apparent Google is likely to prevail in this case. As for whether or not that is a bad thing, the only people who have so far objected are people who make their living marketing and distributing books, because they are afraid that their position is in jeopardy. They are right, their positions are in jeopardy. That does not mean print.google.com is not a wonderful thing for authors, readers, researchers, and mankind as a whole. I'm quite happy if Google indexes books I've written, it is free advertising. As an avid reader I'm happy to be able to easily find books relating to keywords if I am doing research of looking for a reference. I can't imagine that I or very many other people will search for some term, find a book, and use that excerpt of knowledge instead of buying a book, if they would otherwise have bought the book for that purpose. If the excerpt you need is that small you can just write it down at the library of book store and you have no business buying the whole book in the first place. Google print is a double win for authors and consumers and a minor blow to middle men. That is jsut fine, Copyright is supposed to be about encouraging authors and benefitting the people, not ensuring a revenue stream for distributors
>Copying (without republishing) is fine.
Cool, you have just made a discovery that no one else has ever done. I will start copying like crazy (as long as I don't redistribute those copies I am according to you not infringing on copyright).
Now, the question is, what does the part in most copyright laws that says COPYING is an exclusive right to the copyright holder in most cases mean?
As a writer and content creator, I'm a rarity -- I hate copyright.
Why do we need it? I learned in business never to write or say anything proprietary that you don't want others to know.
Copyright is basically using the force of government to enact a monopoly on thought. I'm not sure the process of thought should be regulated or licensed.
The web's easy access to millions of commercial (ie, for profit) copyright works "for free" proves why copyright is outdated: people still buy content they could download freely.
Why do people buy versus download?
1. They appreciate the author's work and want to compensate them.
2. They want to support the author's future work.
3. The time-requirements or download quality is wors than buying the author's version.
4. They're afraid of government force.
I doubt the last is a big reason.
I'm 31. I buy content as its time-cheaper than downloading. For the youth, the reverse is true. The major pirates can't vote, can't sign a contract and can't get credit. 6 years of "piracy" can set up their preferences for 50 years of purchasing.
I say use the web to set up your future customers. Dump copyright.
"They may only be providing snippets, but they're copying the whole damn thing."
So what? As far as the damage to the copyright holder goes, the amount of content copied matters only if you actually distribute it (that is, from the common sense point of view - laws may be as bizarre as you want). If I made 100 copies of a book but I don't distribute them, the damage is zero. Distribution in small, insubstantial fragments counts as fair use.
They wouldn't scan books if they could make a full text search on printed books, which they of course can't. So the actual question here is the one of format shifting: should you have the right to burn your CD on mp3 if you don't give your CD to anyone? (Well, maybe quote a line from a song - which is equivalent to what Google does trhough its service.) If the law says you shouldn't, then the law is unreasonable and must be changed. Even if Google does violate the law here, I'm not sympathetic to the copyright holders in this case.
Having played with it a little bit (they have it up here), a "snippet" appears to be a few pages in either direction of your search result. And they provide handy dandy links to purchase the book if you so desire. If I was a publisher, I would think this was a GREAT way to have people find my books... but then, I am NOT a publisher, so what do I know?
[Let me preface this comment by noting that I write many things, including music.]
If copyright was abandoned it would get rid of a lot of tripe out there in the marketplace. Wouldn't it be great if people wrote not for money but ideas, for a change, if there was genuine competition among ideas and artistic expression?
Idealism? Fantasy? Poppycock? I doubt as if those who have a burning desire to write would be stopped by poor remuneration for their efforts. (The practice of blogging demonstrates this point. Podcasting expands the idea to radio and video.) If the tripe written by those motivated mainly by money was allowed to whither, then eventually the field would be cleared to allow content written by those actually interested to surface and flourish. (Just removal of the advertising efforts to promote the latest schlock would see to that.)
Oh yes, I realize that those writing for money are interested in their subject, too. And yes, many important things wouldn't be written except for the remuneration. (Authors must live, etc.) But I for one can't see the situation getting worse by removing the profit motive from the publishing field. The current system of copyright may benefit works written through coporate collaboration, but is not a friend of the independent. And it is the independent who gave us the calculus, the Tesla coil, Linux, and cellular automata.
Far more work that is of crucial importance has been buried than ever benefited from the skewed book selling and promoting practices now rife in the publishing world. (Note that I refer not to my own work, by the way.)
In addition, most authors are required on their own dime to go out and hawk their work on a touring circuit. There are very few corporate advertising dollars being spent on authors; only a handful are darlings, and they get constant coverage and prominent product placement. Readers are reduced to consumers and it well-known that most markets are created, not discovered. In such contrived circumstances, the very purpose for a readily presentable media -- the content -- suffers.
These remarks apply to most anything able to be copyrighted, by the way.
For starters, the way the law is written, copying appears to be protected privalege granted to the owner of the copyright. From Section 106 of the Copyright Act of 1976:
Note that the original Copyright Act of 1790, did not mention reproduction but rather just "publishing, printing, and vending."
Furthermore, all the articles that I've read that were actually written by lawyers familiar with copyright law, give me the impression that copying for personal, non-comercial use is legal only by way of various precidents, and not by statue. Furthermore, the exact boundries of personal-comercial use are still in flux. This view was held both by people who were in favor of increasing copyright protections, and by those who were in favor of increasing fair use. There was also a great deal of debate among lawyers over whether space-shifting (copying and coverting between formats for personal use) would be concidered fair-use, as no court cases had set a precident yet.
If copying was not restricted at all, then they would not be talking in this way. It would be clear that as long as it was not distributing then it was fine.
If you have any legal sources that back up the idea that copying is not illegal I would love to hear about them, but from everything I have seen, copying is illegal by default, but he most common cases have been ruled fair use, and others are simply overlooked.
Doing anything like, oh... buying the book?
While O'Reilly Books are seriously cool people, they aren't publishing just for the fun of it. They're out to make some money (although they're not completely averse to having fun while doing it). They're also, judging by bookshelves in local geek circles and by the cover prices I've been paying, doing a decent job of it.
So why does O'Reilly Books have the entire (conventional) index of a HELL of a lot of their books available on the web? Free. No charge. Google searchable even. Why? Well, they might be trying to drum up interest in the Safari on-line library, but I don't think that's it. I think that, like Baen's Free Library, they "expect this to make us money by selling books".
I would also suggest you (and Schroeder and Barr) play with Google Scholar before sounding off. Google is already indexing copyrighted materials, many of which are in journals that cost a couple hundred bucks a year to subscribe to. However, they don't show the full text of the article in many cases (unless the publisher wants to). You will see the usual two lines worth of context, and there's usually a link to an abstract. If you search from a .edu IP address, your school may have a electronic subscription that Google will link to. Otherwise... get up off your lazy backside and get thee to a library. When Schroeder and Barr are wondering what Google may mean by "Snippets", this ought to give them a clue about what Google plans to do. Google's lawyers are not stupid; I'd be suprised if even full paragraphs show up on material not yet lasped to the public domain.
I'll also note that Google Scholar has a distinct lack of ads on it. The Google Library might not be ad-free, but it will probably be limited to ads trying to sell books or related materials. Gee, what might that do for the publishing industry?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.