Google Accused of Violating Copyright In China

angry tapir writes "The Chinese Authors Society has demanded that Google present a resolution plan by the end of the year and quickly handle compensation for Chinese authors whose books the US company has scanned without permission as part of its Book Search program. A local copyright protection group, co-founded by the authors group, has said it found at least 17,000 Chinese works included in Google's scanning plan."

Comments

Re:Is this really about copyright?

[CTachyon]

You clearly don't know your 18th century American or European history.

America built its textile industry, and indeed its prominence in the Industrial Revolution, only by flagrantly violating the patents of established European countries, especially those of Britain (and Scotland, the Silicon Valley of the day). In fact, the blatant colonial-day flouting of patent law and the use of "industrial espionage" (i.e. brain drain) against Britain was actually a significant pain point in the years leading into America's Revolutionary War, and tangentially figured into Britain's enthusiasm for the War of 1812.

(Copyrights were violated as well, but weren't considered as important at the time. Copyright itself was still crawling out of the cradle and unfamiliar to many — the first modern copyright law, the Statute of Anne, was passed only at the start of that century in 1709. At that point in time, copyright wasn't considered an economic engine, the way that patents were.)