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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."
No, they're planning to sell individual sentences, just like Google Book Search displays.
At just 10 cents a sentence, reading books on your mobile phone is going to be even more popular than getting the latest ringtones!
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
In theory -- precedent for district courts doesn't exist except as it applies to the case at hand.
In reality, it can make a difference. A well reasoned, well thought out district court case which is on point will carry weight with other districts. For instance, the facts and legal ruling in Arkansas v. Jones has been cited and used 100's of times -- including by the Supreme Court, although it was never actually appealed. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District carries a similar type of weight.
Although other judges are not bound by the decision, they often choose to affirm them through incorporation into their own rulings.
That being said, in this case it is unlikely to have significant precedent -- since I imagine Google will appeal.
Whether the images were pirated or not is not Google's problem. They should inform Google (who would doubtless take down the images) and go after the pirates. Google has no way of knowing who in the slimy world of online porn is the copyright owner, who is licensed, who is using stuff under fair use, and who is a "pirate".
The judge made a mistake. Google's thumbnails were not the same thumbnails. They were a different expression of the same idea. Sleazy, but not illegal.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Why doesn't Google just super-impose "Copyrighted" on the thumbnail images? That way people really wouldn't want to use them for cell phones since they are distorted.
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 believe one of the criteria for fair use is that it doesn't cause economic harm.
The impact on the market is considered as a factor, but it is by no means the only factor, and other factors can easily outweigh it.
Consider a book review that uses a few quotes from the book to show that it is utterly factually incorrect. That review could clearly cause significant economic harm, and yet it is still fair use because the other factors outweigh the impact on the market.
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.
There's missing a key point:
Perfect 10 blocked Google from indexing the site.
Third party copied the content and put it on their own site.
Google indexed that third parties site (not perfect 10's) compounding a existing copyright violation.
Whereas the book publishers can simply tell Google which books they don't want scanned and so they've given implicit permission by refusing to list those books.
Since fair use is a value judgement made by a judge interpreting a vague law, he sided with Perfect 10, but the same situation doesn't with the book publishers.
There's no question that Google will benefit financially from Google Book Search. Google's program is commercial; it will make money selling ads on its search pages. There's no question that Google Book Search will infringe copyright. The question is whether Google's infringement is fair use. Part of the determination of whether copyright infringement is fair use goes to the potential of that infringement to cause economic harm to the copyright holder. If Google can index the complete text of a book without paying the author, the author can't sell that right to another party.
In the Perfect 10 case, Perfect 10 claimed Google's thumbnails interfere with its ability to sell its own thumbnails to cellphone companies. It's not clear to me that the Authors' Guild will be able to point to so specific an instance of economic harm. OTOH, the courts are generally reluctant to try to anticipate the market. Who's to say book search indexes that will pay authors for the right to include their texts won't spring up? I think the AG can probably make a compelling argument that Google's infringement chokes off the potential for authors to make money directly from selling this right, even if no one is putting money on the table right now. But that argument might not be compelling enough for things to go the authors' way.
Michael
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
"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