Frustrated Judge Pushes For Solution In Google Books Case

SpuriousLogic writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report: "A Manhattan federal judge set a Sept. 15 deadline for Google, authors and publishers to come up with a legal plan to create the world's largest digital library, expressing frustration that the six-year-old dispute has not been resolved. At a hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said if the dispute is not 'resolved or close to resolved in principle' by mid-September, he will set a 'relatively tight schedule' for the parties to prepare for a possible trial. ... Citing antitrust and copyright concerns, Chin had on March 22 rejected a $125 million settlement. He said it went 'too far' in allowing Google to exploit digitized copyrighted works by selling subscriptions to them online and engaging in 'wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission.'"

Comments

Re:Resolved?

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem is that Google wants to both include books that are still under copyright and charge a fee for access to them. Further, Google wants to include books that are still under copyright where the holder of copyright is either unknown, or no one knows where to find them. Just because Google does not know how to find an author does not give them the right to make copies of the author's work without permission.
Of course, this problem would go away if copyright only lasted for a reasonable amount of time (say something on the order of 10-30 years).

Re:A monopoly in what?

[icebike]

Don't be ridiculous.
Every person who has used google books knows you are lying.
How can you say its not available on line, and in the next sentence claim you only get blurry images? You can't have it both ways.
Its all on line.
Full texts are available, both imaged and OCRed flowing text, for all books that are free of copyright encumbrance. You can read the whole book.
Unless the publisher or author still holds a copyright and refuses to allow google to put it out there.

Your argument is internally inconsistent, at war with itself, and at odds with the facts. Do just a little research.