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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
Even if you think that Google is Damien's evil brother, this is the right damn decision.
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.
If google can legally copy books (even when profit is involved) then why can't I do the same?
Wouldn't I get hammered with copyright infringement problems if I scanned in books I did not author myself?
Somebody help me here. This sounds like somebody claiming to be a member of the United States judicial branch has made a reasonable and correct decision. Please tell me the other branches are still doing whatever they can to correct this aberration...
Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books. It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits.
Depending on how Chin's decision stands up on the inevitable appeal, this paragraph has probably given us some very useful & explicit design considerations to incorporate in projects likely to face similar claims of copyright violation.
The SUMMARY tells you no. Two key facts were that a) entire books are not available, you can only read a couple of pages and b) it doesn't compete with full copies, but rather increases sales of full copies by helping consumers find books they are interested in.
So, if this stands does this mean it's lawful for Google to make the full text available of these books, or not?
From TFS:
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.
If Google were to make the full text available, this ruling obviously wouldn't apply.
So, if this stands does this mean it's lawful for Google to make the full text available of these books, or not?
Fair use cases are very fact specific. If you start monkeying with the facts, Judge Chin might not feel the same way about it.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You can legally do the same. Just the summary alone mentions two key considerations:
Google allowed readers to see just a couple of pages, excerpts.
That did not compete with sales of the full book, but rather increased the author's sales of the books by helping people find books they might like to buy.
The opinion has another 20 pages looking at the various factors involved.
Google is not just copying anything, and everything, they want.
If it was any other company, it would have probably never even gone to court.
> I don't mind people who did both processes getting a fair return but we need to decide what a fair return is.
It's 9.8%. Over the long term, they'll average 9.8% per year and there's nothing we can do to change that.
Suppose for a moment that there was a very high return. Let's say 50%.
Microsoft and their Bing divison, along with Amazon and others would be watching that and thinking:
We have $50 million dollars to spend on our next project.
We can either spend that on developing a game console, with an expected return of 2%, or
on digitizing books, with a return of 50%.
Fire up the digitizer!
People generally invest in the type of projects that are getting the best returns. So due to the 50% return, you'd have Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all offering different versions of the service. Maybe Microsoft would have no ads, but it would only work in IE11 on Windows 8.1.
Amazon's would be similar to Google, but with fewer, more obtrusive ads for full books that float over the digital pages.
With two competitors, Google's return would decrease. Specifically, new entrants keep coming in with different (better, cheaper, etc.) versions as long as the return is higher than other projects. It turns out that "other projects" return 9.8%, on average. So anything with a risk-adjusted return higher than 9.8% draws competitors.
If money goes IN to lines of business where it'll make more than 9.8%, where does it come FROM? From shutting down (or foregoing) operations that make less, of course. Any business with a risk-adjusted return less than 9.8% has some providers leave the market for greener pastures.
With the competitors close, their market share goes to the remaining competitors, so the remaining people get increased returns. Specifically, competitors keep leaving and the return keeps increasing until the return is as good as other options - about 9.8%.
So that's what you end up with - in the long term, any industry in the US has a risk-adjusted return of about 9.8%. Some, like oil or farming, are subject to high volatility - good years and bad years. Exxon for example is affected by oil prices, so it goes up and down. Exxon averaged 11.62% over the last 10 years, 7.86% over the last 15 years - everything swings up and down around that 9.8% mark.
Google limits the amount of pages you can view on media with active copyrights. It is tied to your IP which remains blacklisted for some time (months?). It would be possible to get a full copy if you could get around the blacklisting but that's more trouble than just getting a copy of the book in the first place.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Find any other company doing the same thing, and the result would be the same.
Its not WHO does it that determines fair use. It is WHAT is actually done.
Your response is the typical jealousy based response. Not rich enough
and not smart enough to pull this off even on a small scale, therefore Google
must have be evil.
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Generally, you CAN copy a whole book, it isn't necessary to claim you only read a few pages.
You can copy it and read all of it, or copy a whole album on tape and then listen to the whole album.
What you can't do is sell whole copies.
Yes, that's a three sentence summary of 100 pages of law, so of course there are more details than that.
I'm sorry, but did you miss what happened with a guy named Aaron Schwartz? Maybe you missed that story, but in essence he was doing the same thing. Did you also miss all of the Amazon successful lawsuits against B&N?
So it's not petty jealousy, it's real world examples.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
yet if you target other sections with your search the limit would slide and if you were clever/persistent enough you would be able to access the full text
Try it some time. It won't work.
From the judgement:
Google takes security measures to prevent users from
viewing a complete copy of a snippet-view book. For example, a
user cannot cause the system to return different sets of snippets
for the same search query; the position of each snippet is fixed
within the page and does not "slide" around the search term; only
the first responsive snippet available on any given page will be
returned in response to a query; one of the snippets on each page
is "black-listed," meaning it will not be shown; and at least one
out of ten entire pages in each book is black-listed.
An "attacker" who tries
to obtain an entire book by using a physical copy of the book to
string together words appearing in successive passages would be
able to obtain at best a patchwork of snippets that would be
missing at least one snippet from every page and 10% of all
pages.
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Google was guilty of breaking into facilities they don't own, hacking a computer network, and releasing every page of every book ever printed???
That would be the situation to make it equivalent to Mr. Schwartz. I agree that the witch hunt against him was uncalled for, but don't equate his actions to Google releasing snippets of books.
==
Posting as AC to avoid the nerd rage machine.
I'm sorry, but did you miss what happened with a guy named Aaron Schwartz?
Schwartz was not working from legal copies obtained by legal means.
Nor was he providing snippets, but rather whole texts.
He wasn't even arrested for copyright infringement.
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Google bought every single copy they scanned.
They own those books.
Here here! There will always be Anonymous twitwad morons who will jump to conclusions especially when it comes to bashing Google regardless of the facts. If Google are seen to be fighting for fair use then they must be doing something nefarious. I have even seen claims here that Google must have bought out the judge! NOTICE that the fuckwads posting the fud are all anon cowards. NOW when Slashdot posts an article about what the Rockstar consortium is up to the same fuckwads come out of the wood works with their UID full on defending the patent troll attacks on Google.
The very same crowd of morons hammer away at Engadget and other sites like CNET. I have been watching their posts and some are obviously doing it on a full time basis. There are only 4 or 5 of them but they are easy to identify to say the least because they are stupid enough to cut and paste the same comments between the sites!
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Google was guilty of breaking into facilities they don't own, hacking a computer network, and releasing every page of every book ever printed???
Last time I checked, the facts were that: (1) Swartz had free and open access to both the building and the closet in which he placed his computer, (2) any hacking he did amounted to (possibly) changing his MAC address and violating terms of service, and (3) none of the material he downloaded was released by him to the public. Have any reliable sources to contradict this?
Schwartz was not working from legal copies obtained by legal means.
You are ignoring facts to make such a statement, primarily that he was not found guilty of anything. He was allowed access to a buildings, allowed access to a network, and was allowed access to the documentation he was downloading. The people requesting prosecution were not the authors, but a DRM company making a profit off the materials. Most of the documentation Aaron was downloading was public domain with no Copyrights, being hoarded by the same DRM company. Even after he was asked not to copy, there was no enforcement and no protections added. It's really too bad he committed suicide, it would have been nearly impossible to convict him which is why the prosecution was trying to threaten him into a plea..
The next two statements are factual, but does not change the case nor my statements. Google does not provide only snippets either, at least in things I have tested (which admittedly was a couple years back). I may have to change a URL or perform a few searches, but they are scanning all of the data and not just a snippet.
I agree that the cases are not identical. That said, it's preferential treatment that _nobody_ else has received and there is no expectation that anyone would receive such treatment.
Didn't we just have a case here yesterday where Lyric sites providing only lyrics were going to be shut down because of copyrights and making ad revenue from those sites? The reason to mention that is because even if Google was only using snippets, another precedent being set claims you can not make revenue off of even a portion of copyrighted material.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Just go read the Judges ruling.
You clearly don't have a clue about how the Google books search works. You are talking nonsense.
Nobody said google was only USING snippets. Google will only GIVE YOU snippets.
Just like the librarian that won't let you copy a whole book but will let you copy a coupe pages.
Google doesn't SELL these snippets. There is no advertising on the pages that contain Snippets.
There are unpaid links to stores that sell the book you are looking at. And some libraries that are
known to have a copy.
READ WHAT THE JUDGE SAID FOR CHRISTS SAKE.
Its a court ruling. Anyone who wants to copy google's model, in whole or in part can point to that ruling in court.
Unless or until it is overturned, it is the law of the land.
Please, I beg you, go read the ruling. You are making an idiot of yourself on the internet.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
But can I go to your house, copy your books (with your permission), and then take my copies with me?
Kid-proof tablet..
I'm setting up a free service. Anyone can contact me with a question about some topic. I'll search all the books in my fairly large and diverse personal library, and if I find something cool on the topic, I'll get back to you with full bibliographic information and read to you a short excerpt from the book. Oh, and, of course, I'll also read to you a very short, but interesting and personalized, advertisement. I apologize that I won't be able to handle the same volume as Google, nor can I promise the same extensive results to your query. What I can promise is a personal touch. Google can't give you that.
What's in it for me? Whatever money I make from advertisements, and enhancement to my personal brand. (I mean, the chicks are going to dig this!) But, as previously noted, the service is completely free to the end user. So, support the honest efforts of an enterprising individual. Lines are open!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Once you and NYCL have agreed on fees, you can transfer funds through these payment options.
I am glad the court found in Google's favor.
However.... I liked the settlement idea better.
It would have enabled Google to allow me to read entire books online without DRM, directly from a Google search, with a small payment....
For most of the books Google did, yes. They are either public domain or Google has the publisher's permission. For the others, unless there are facts I'm not aware of, I don't suppose that would be legal. However, I haven't read the entirety of the court's opinion. It's quite likely there was a reason the court ruled as it did - some matter of fact or law not mentioned in the page or two we read from the 30 page opinion.
If money goes IN to lines of business where it'll make more than 9.8%, where does it come FROM? From shutting down (or foregoing) operations that make less, of course.
That would only be true if these companies had no liquid assets, no "war chest," and all of their money was working at 100% all the time.
None of that is true. The existing businesses most in a position to compete in a new area in fact tend to be large and have difficulty keeping their money working; when they see an opening, they can throw a bunch of money at it that was otherwise not working effectively.
And startups the drain is more in people that available money, because there is usually lots and lots more money available for statups than actually gets used, because teams that inspire confidence are the bottleneck, not the funding.
But can I go to your house, copy your books (with your permission), and then take my copies with me?
Yes.
But I could get in trouble if I invite you over specifically for that purpose, or if I charge you a fee, or if I advertise to my friends that they can come and copy my books. This is exactly the same as copying of cassette tapes, and making cassette tapes of radio broadcasts.
You ARE allowed to share with your friends in a very limited way. But it has to be like, your friend is already visiting, and asks to make a copy, and makes the copy themselves.
Obviously people can only invest by having assets invest. You don't build up a "war chest" by throwing away your money on a losing proposition. As you said:
"when they see an opening, they can throw a bunch of money at it that was otherwise not working effectively."
In other words, stop doing things that aren't effective at generating a decent return. We saw this today on Slashdot. Auto maintenance wasn't generating a return near 9.8%, so Sears is closing it's auto centers and putting those resources towards datacenters, which do generate a healthy return.
You say "would only be true". Pick ANY industry and look at the average return US companies in that industry made over any 20 year period. You'll see it IS true. Pick various lines of business at various times. You'll see they all have an average return close to 9.8%. It simply IS true. The return is somewhat risk-adjusted; people will tolerate a slightly lower return if it's consistent, and require a higher return if it has wild swings. It's always close to 9.8% over any extended period of time, though.
One more thing. The whole fucking Google Snippet page is giant advertisements! Glad to know you are either a shill or an idiot. I refuse to fix the formatting on the quotes, for a liar.
Painting Books - Acrylic Art Instruction , Beginner Level Snippets ...
$24.99 from NorthLightShop.com
The President's Devotional: The Daily Readings That Inspired ...
by Joshua DuBois HarperCollins 2013.10.22 hardback 432 pages
In the heat of Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, staff member Joshua DuBois recognized the wear and tear on his boss and asked the senator if he could e-mail a ...more
66 seller reviews
$17.01 Barnes & Noble
$14.00 Alibris
$23.12 Bookdepository.com
Compare prices from 10+ stores
Snippets of a Days Steeplechase and Hurdling - with a Short Guide ...
$26.45 from Barnes & Noble
12,748 seller reviews
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I did state that Google makes ad revenue on the pages that serve the snippets.
Again, go back and read what the judge wrote. Your first reading was a failure.
There is no advertising on the snippet pages.
Further, the lyrics group published the FULL lyrics, not snippets, so NO not the same thing at all.
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Read my 2nd post, the whole page IS ads! There is no entry there that is NOT advertising. Or you trying to claim that a link to Amazon, B&N, Wallmart, etc.. from Google will generate Google no revenue?
Lyrics is not the song, the song is the music and the lyrics. Both sites are giving parts not the whole, both could be of the same value to the copyright holders. Hard to take your bias glasses off, I get it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Oh, my gawd, you don't even have a clue about what is being discussed!!!
Not the first clue!!!
We are not talking about a list of books for sale, with publicly released dust jacket descriptions.
we are talking about the FULL TEXT search capability of entire books.
Key this into google, Quotes and all: "to moscow with an atlas"
Click the first hit, or any hit that points to Books.google.com.
You will see the text of the book, Not all of the book. Just snippets.
Not a price in site. There are links to libraries and book sellers.
No wonder you are so confused. You don't even know what this issue is about.
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Lyrics are a separately copyrighted work.
The copyright holder is in most cases not the person who even wrote, sang, or recorded the song.
Again you don't even understand what we are talking about here.
Click this link to show a typical google books text search so you can at least be vaguely acquainted with the topic under discussion http://tinyurl.com/p4xq4w9
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Of course we have the right (in the US) to record broadcasts for the purposes of timeshifting, but not necessarily to give a copy to a friend. [citation]
[citation needed]
Kid-proof tablet..
You still havent read the judgement then. I will make it simple: the links are UNPAID. Google do NOT GET PAID if you follow them
Have ytou worked out the difference between the lyric sites and google books yet? Its all in the judgement.
It also comes from "Hear him!", and was only later changed to "hear hear"
It very clearly *isnt* illegal. the Legal expert in the matter stated so.
Key this into google, Quotes and all: "to moscow with an atlas" Click the first hit, or any hit that points to Books.google.com.
So you are claiming again something false. Here is the top left frame from that page, right below the big red button labelled "GET PRINT BOOK"
Are you running noscript and adblock and talking about what you see vs. what Google is serving and what the page really holds?
No eBook available
Naval Institute Press
Amazon.com
Barnes&Noble.com
Books-A-Million
IndieBound
Find in a library
All sellers
No wonder you are so confused, you are denying what is on the page as "ads". It may not be a "Lee Jeans" ad, but it's an ad to a reseller to buy the book which does generate revenue for Google.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
How do you know that it generates revenue for Google? Further, how do you know that the links always generate revenue for Google (as opposed to it depending on the book displayed on the page, the book's copyright status, and any pertinent license agreements between Google and the book's copyright holder)?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In fairness, I don't. Also, to be fair, I did not see the evidence that this Judge did when he made his ruling. It is quite possible that Google makes no revenue from this "now", and has no plans to change that. With that in mind, these don't look like freebies for Amazon, B&N, etc.. (these are not flat links, but uniquely encoded for clicks) and Google does not give things away as a rule. We have a company with a descent track record of dishonesty at the expense of others. Not always, but enough in my mind to raise questions.
Google obviously convinced a Judge that it was a non-profit freebie therefor was not illegal. The point was, and still is, that any other company would probably not be able to convince a judge of their "good will" making their work "fair use". There are plenty of examples of those as well.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
. (these are not flat links, but uniquely encoded for clicks) and Google does not give things away as a rule.
gain, with the alligations of high crimes based on mere speculation.
Most are indeed flat links. Follow one of them. They lead directly to the page of the same name at the seller' web site, or to the sellers internal search facility via isbn numbers.
Merely mentioning that you can buy the book if you go to another site is not advertising.
Even if there was an agreement for Barnes And Nobel to pay google 12 cents for a hit to their site, it still wouldn't be advertising, because the B&N link looks no different than any other link, and the sale proceeds if one of these sites actually makes a sale go to the Publisher, the Author, and to the book seller, not google.
The Judge has ruled. He said it is fully with fair use. Your arguments mean nothing, because someone with a higher pay grade has ruled.
And google gives a way far more than any company I know.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It is cited in the opinion as the Clancy declaration, with the specific paragraph noted. You can probably dig it up yourself. This would've been available not only to the judge, but also to the opposing side, and they had the opportunity to present evidence to the contrary. Apparently they either didn't or didn't provide anything more convincing than what Google had. Part of what courts do is settle disputed questions of fact. If this was disputed, it is now settled so far as this case goes: the links are not ads. And as this is a generally applicable precedent, other companies are free to do the same ad Google and expect to also be protected.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Even if there was an agreement for Barnes And Nobel to pay google 12 cents for a hit to their site, it still wouldn't be advertising,
That is funny, perhaps you should get a dictionary and look up the definition of advertising. Your description of the transaction that follows is amazingly identical to how a lyric site would generate revenue from music. The lyric site would not make money from the song either, they would make the money from the company selling the song after a user followed the link. These sites are not selling lyrics any more than Google is selling the books.
Most are indeed flat links. Follow one of them. They lead directly to the page of the same name at the seller' web site, or to the sellers internal search facility via isbn numbers.
I did follow links which is why I know they were encoded. Maybe the art of html-fu is not within you. "http://www.site.com/" is a flat link. "http://www.site.com/page?long_string" is not a flat link.
Your arguments mean nothing, because someone with a higher pay grade has ruled.
Way to be an ass hat!
And google gives a way far more than any company I know.
Not relevant to the points given, and does not take away a track record of proven wrong doing. Now you just sound like a Google shill.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Thanks for the well thought out response. If I have the time I'll go back and see if I can find what you said is lacking, because I'm baffled on how the links were not considered advertisements. I completely neglected the thoughts that the case law could be used by others, and appreciate that pointer.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
My advice, look it up and read about it. There is not a single citation I can give that is going to be an Idiot's Guide to Fair Use Precedent.
And if you're not going to research it, why seek citations? Just believe me or don't, that's really your only choice other than research, and that would still be true if I gave 100 cites.
Not to mention, this is a conversation, a comment system on slashdot. You've been here long to know I wasn't attempting to publish my comment in an academic journal.
I've been researching it and studying it since the Audio Home Recording Act of (1992?).
I just reckon that with my twenty-ish years of studying, that anything abnormal should come with a citation.
You don't have a citation.
*shrug*
Therefore, DM, I disbelieve.
Kid-proof tablet..
You're full of it. If you have so much knowledge, disagree! Do it! I dare you.
But no, you can't actually identify anything wrong with what I said, or offer some sort of differing explanation. So instead of commenting with general, unspecified, weasel-y claims of authority... look it up.