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Google Books Case Dismissed On Fair Use Grounds
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a case of major importance, the long simmering battle between the Authors Guild and Google has reached its climax, with the court granting Google's motion for summary judgment, dismissing the case, on fair use grounds. In his 30-page decision (PDF), Judge Denny Chin — who has been a District Court Judge throughout most of the life of the case but is now a Circuit Court Judge — reasoned that, although Google's own motive for its "Library Project" (which scans books from libraries without the copyright owners' permission and makes the material publicly available for search), is commercial profit, the project itself serves significant educational purposes, and actually enhances, rather than detracts from, the value of the works, since it helps promote sales of the works. Judge Chin also felt that it was impossible to use Google's scanned material, either for making full copies, or for reading the books, so that it did not compete with the books themselves."
for us all. Better deal would say, by all means copy, BUT you must make it fully available. I'm going through awful problems right now trying to get a copy of a 1776 book which was microfilmed ages ago, then digitised more recently. I don't mind people who did both processes getting a fair return but we need to decide what a fair return is. Super profits for people like the infamous convicted modern Enlgish airport fiction writer just don't cut it.
work in progress
Google spent a lot of money to help us find books. I really don't mind seeing ads down the side while I search. They are not preventing anyone else from spending lots of money to do the same thing.
What they're "about" is, google has lots of Beeeeeellions of dollars laying around, and since they already did this, might as well make a grab at some of their cash. Regardless of if google's actions even harm them.
In the end, their greed cost them a bunch of legal expenses, whereas the moral high ground would have permitted them instead to focus on the free promotional value.