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Ruling May Impact Google Book Search Case
jsherman256 wrote to mention an NYT article discussing another possible problem on Google's legal front. A court decision in another case may spell trouble for their 'book search' technology. "In the recent case, Judge A. Howard Matz of United States District Court for the Central District of California, said Google's use of thumbnail-sized reproductions in its image search program violated the copyright of Perfect 10, a publisher of X-rated magazines and Web sites, because it undermined that company's ability to license those images for sale to mobile phone users ... 'I think it takes the wind out of their sails,' Jan Constantine, the general counsel for the Authors Guild, said of the Perfect 10 decision. The guild and the Association of American Publishers brought copyright infringement lawsuits against Google over its Book Search program."
Sounds like Perfect 10 was able to show economic harm (lost sales to cellphone users). I believe one of the criteria for fair use is that it doesn't cause economic harm.
I don't see how a book search that only shows excerpts causes any economic harm. If anything, it will increase sales.
IANAL.
If I were Google, I would just drop perfect 10 from their search results entirely. I bet this would lose them more sales than thumbnails ever would.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Both the Author's Guild and the American Association of Publishers lawsuits were filed in New York Federal Courts, while this was in California.
http://www.santacruzbynight.com/index.shtml Santa Cruz By Night Vampire Larp
Can't all of these web sites exclude their material from Google by using the industry standard robots.txt file? I know that doesn't apply to the book search, but it certainly applies to Perfect 10's web sites. If so, why is there any legal challenge to Google's web site search functions?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I somehow doubt that the original conceivers of copyright law intended for most of the world's works to be locked up in 'corporate vaults' never to see the light of day again because the estimated potential profits off of those works were considered too small to be worth it. But publishers, especially bigger ones, only seem to care about the most profitable mass-market stuff. Why don't they team up with Google to sell electronic versions of those books that are OOP? They could surely make a killing ... but perhaps those companies tend to be too conservative and risk-averse.
"If I were Google, I would just drop perfect 10 from their search results entirely. I bet this would lose them more sales than thumbnails ever would."
Yeah sure, that would work. I'm sure Google going, "you mess with us, you're off the grid" is just the news that the ever-increasing number of people wary of Google's growing clout are just waiting for.
What next? Google removing Reporters without Borders from their index because they complained about their China policies?
With apologies to Oscar Wilde, "The only thing worse than being indexed by Google is NOT being indexed by google".
What google ought to do is *not* index these authors; these guys really are so goofy they don't understand what a boon this will be to them for people to get to their book, read a few sentences and then jump over to an online bookstore and buy it. Instead, they'll have to be content with a few sales here and there. Then they can go to their guild meetings and bitch about how the country is becoming illiterate.
Its like they're so greedy for a nickel here that they can't see the 10 dollars that is coming tomorrow if they're just patient.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The bottom line is that the United States is going to go down the tubes squabbling over "Intellectual Garbage" while other countries prosper because they are unencumbered by this foolishness and enjoy the benefits of more open information sharing.
"Hey... don't be mean." --Buckaroo Banzai