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Google Books Can Proceed As Supreme Court Rejects Authors Guild Appeal (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to Google's online book library -- Google Books -- from authors who complained that the project makes it harder for them to market their work. The Authors Guild and other writers had claimed that Google's scanning of their books should be deemed as copyright infringement and not fair use. The Supreme Court let stand the lower court opinion that rejected the writers' claims. The decision today means Google Books won't have to close up shop or ask publishers for permission to scan.The ruling, Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the authors group, said, "misunderstood the importance of emerging online markets for books and book excerpts. It failed to comprehend the very real potential harm to authors resulting from its decision. The price of this short-term public benefit may well be the future vitality of American culture."
That's not what the publishers are complaining about in the summary. They say that it's harder for publishers to market their authors' works because Google is already marketing it for free as search results. This means that authors no longer need to spend any money on marketing if they don't want to. Basically publishers are victims of market efficiency.
As one of those born-before-1990 people, you were still limited to the editorial choices made by your librarian or library staff, or the city-council or schoolboard or college board that made policy decisions affecting the library. It was also difficult to evaluate the worthiness of the book itself, there were not as many sources to use to find out if the author was truly an expert in the subject or if the author was pushing an agenda that ran toward fringe/junk science.
Then there was the time-element. It simply took a long time to peruse the material. It was often not possible to search the text of the book to find something relevant, one had to hope that the author and editor did their jobs well and organized chapters and subjects in a logical fashion.
Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of veracity problems with modern Internet-based techniques, and there are still problems with junk work and authors masquerading as legitimate that are merely trying to push an agenda, but it's a lot easier than it used to be to get to that part of evaluating the work, instead of spending so much time just trying to find the works in the first place.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Publishers hate the on-line revolution and the ability of authors such as myself and millions more to self-publish.
What the publishers don't realize is that Google is giving them free publicity. I'd guess that Google's efforts increase sales, not decrease them. Google just publishes sample pages. Like what you read? You'll have to buy the book, and you just might do that!
But no, publishers want things to be like they were 50 years ago, when they were the kings of the book world, and they controlled everything.