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Google To Seek Dismissal of Suit Against Google Books
angry tapir writes with an update on the drawn out legal battle between Google and everyone else over their Books service. From the article: "After a so-far fruitless three-year effort to settle the case, Google and the plaintiffs suing it for alleged book-related copyright infringement apparently are moving away from seeking a friendly solution. Google has notified the court that it intends to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it by authors and publishers in 2005, in which they allege copyright infringement stemming from Google's wholesale scanning of millions of library books without the permission of copyright owners. Google Books has been at the center of copyright-related controversy since 2005 when the Authors Guild of America and Association of American Publishers sued the search giant. This has been followed by other legal wrangles, including a 2010 suit by the American Society of Media Photographers, lawsuits in France and Germany and conflict with Chinese authors over the book-scanning project."
You make a strong point for why an author should want their works on Google. But I think a better analogy might be that the authors are like a starving dog biting the hand of someone who is tying to tie it up and shove steaks down its gullet. Google is not offering the authors a (possibly beneficial) service; it is doing everything it can to force it upon them.
The fact remains that Google is scanning large numbers of books and posting them freely on the internet. And, while it may not be their only motive, they are doing it for their own profit.
Should massive digital libraries be allowed? Yes. However, this should be take care of by two things: For slightly old works, reasonable limits on copyright duration - thus allowing anyone to create such an index. For new works, the copyright holder should be able to offer their works as they see fit. And the idea that they should have to opt out of Google copying their work is insane (even if there is some appeal to the idea of the RIAA/MPAA having to opt out of people copying their works).
-WolvesOfTheNight
"What is Google's defense?"
They're not distributing copies of books--they're doing searches and returning small snippets. The books are scanned, with the permission of their owners, only in order to allow those searches.
I would have thought first-sale rights would permit the owners of books to have their own copies scanned, and that fair use would permit Google to search them and return snippets.
None of this cuts into the publisher's traditional source of profits at all, as the publisher is still who a member of the public goes to to get a copy of the book.
If we really think copyright holders should have complete control over how every copy of their work is *used*, not only distributed, then they should have cut off the problem at the source and forbidden libraries....
The people behind the lawsuits are publishers and "authors guilds", organizations made obsolete by Google and electronic publishing. And they aren't suing over their own books (they could just have them removed), they are suing over the vast quantity of orphan works that they don't own but that would provide unwelcome free competition to their content.