Google are not library employees or agents and what Google is making is not simply an index so none of your points have anything to do with this.
You are mistaken. Google is acting as an agent of the libraries to index the libraries' own lawfully-held collections so that the libraries can effectively carry out their rightful, just, and legitimate mission.
Even though Google is not reselling the books in Google Print, they're profiting from it -- because they have traffic to sell text ads on.
You are mistaken. From the Google Print Library Project FAQ:
Does Google display ads on books scanned from a library?
No. There are no advertisements on the books that are scanned from a library. Please take a look at the Google Print Screenshots page to see more about how library books will be displayed.
It doesn't matter in what format the copy is made; the Copyright Act of 1976 is technology-neutral.
2) Libraries have the right to produce catalogs of their holdings. Reading a book for the purpose of preparing a catalog does not constitute "making a reproduction."
3) Libraries are allowed small quotations from a work a permitted in catalogs, and a work with multiple subjects may have multiple entries, each with its own small quote.
They are making a copy of the entire work, as opposed to some small portion of it.
1) There are much more efficient ways to implement an index to a collection of books than a plaintext UTF-8 representation. It would be surprising if that is how Google did it.
2) Even if a plaintext UTF-8 represenation of the book were on the system's disk, that representation is never read by a human. An electronic silicon-based mechanism lacks the capacity to be the genuine recipient of a distribution, so the scanning process never results in a distribution.
3) The portions of the work which will be read by humans are small (unless the copyright holder opts in to something more expansive).
The last time I tried it, Google returned 2 or 3 pages.
Google returns that many pages only when the copyright holders have explicitly opted in. You have mistaken Google Print's publisher program with Google Library.
Or ask for permission? The authors' copyrights grant the libraries permission to make the works the libraries purchased discoverable. The libraries do not need to ask permission to exercise those rights.
They certainly do not gain any ability to grant other people the right to copy without limit.
1) Employees and agents of the libraries certainly are not "other people." They certainly have the rights to do what the libraries have the right to do.
2) People employed by libraries as reference librarians certainly have the right to read the books the library owns, and to remember what they read. Reading and remembering does not constitute making a copy. When a patron asks a reference librarian where to find a book about President Johnson, the reference librarian has the right, if he knows, to reply "See such-and-such a book about President Andrew Johnson, the successor to Abraham Lincoln and such-and-such a book about President Lyndon Johnson, the successor to John Kennedy." That the reference librarian referred to his own memory of the books does not mean that the books were, in the sense of the law, "copied" into the reference librarian's brain.
3) British authors are entitled to payment when their books are borrowed, not whenever someone looks at the book in the index of the library's collection. That the index is improved by increasing the number of categories and the precision of the categories under which a book may be located has no bearing on the compensation of British authors.
4) Google Library does not allow patrons to take home copies of the book. Google is not a patron of the library, it is the library's agent.
Scanning a work makes an encoding, not a reproduction. The encoding could enable someone to make a reproduction, but it is not itself a reproduction. Strictly speaking Google is not making any copies.
The libraries acquire the right to read (and archive) the entire work by purchasing it. The libraries' employees and agents have the right to use the entire work in carrying out the libraries' purposes, one of which is to make works discoverable to the libraries' patrons. For these reasons, Google's indexing is just and legitimate.
If it were Microsoft that decided to copy the contents of every book ever written,/. would be full of posts discussing how easy it would be to hack into the system to actually get the entire contents of the book. But since it was Google that decided to do the copying, no one here thinks there is anything bad about it.
Microsoft prospered with a deliberate strategy of producing slipshod software at lower price. The billions of revenue are, regretably but necessarily, accompanied by a reputation for shoddy work. Community skepticism of Microsoft's ability to execute even a reasonably secure system may hurt Microsoft's feelings, but not (yet) its profitability.
Google's business model requires a strategy of excellence. Because end users do not pay for search results, they will migrate to whichever engine produces superior results. The advertisers will follow the end users. If Google chose a slipshod, "80% is good enough," "all software has bugs so we will ignore your complaints," "if you want that bug fixed you must buy the upgrade," execution, it would lose its users and then its revenues. Consequently, Google is moved to excellence by the same invisible hand of the marketplace that mires Microsoft in the muck; and this is why the community believes that Google Library will be secure.
The only Google staff who might require access to an entire work through some unrestricted channel would be those working directly on the project; and they would be acting as the libraries' agents and thus commit no violation.
Do you mean the search would respond with something like "There were 427 matches but I can only reveal 423 of them because I have previously revealed 4 to another user who has not yet lost interest."
The problem is that many books are bought mistakenly, or under peer pressure, or just from curiosity, or just because the customer wanted to learn one specific thing. If the excerpt from the book is sufficient to stop the customer from buying, the publisher has a problem.
I believe you are overlooking something. Any book bought mistakenly or because the customer wanted to learn one specific thing can be returned. Here is Amazon's policy:
Books purchased from Amazon.com, including books purchased from Borders teamed with Amazon.com or Waldenbooks teamed with Amazon.com, are easily returned within 30 days of receipt of shipment to Amazon.com via our online Returns Center.
The authors have the right to determine who makes copies of their materials.
You are a mistaken anonymous coward. Copyright holders (who are sometimes the authors) have the right to determine who distributes copies of the works they control. You, as purchaser of a work, have the right to make as many copies as you please. You may not distribute them. You may quote from them in conversation, though.
Google says that the copyright holder may opt out. An organization of authors has no standing because it is not the copyright holder.
Authors could form an organization to which they would cede their rights to request exclusion, and that organization would presumably have standing to request the exclusion of the works of its members. The Author's Guild is not such an organization.
The authors do not own the material. They retain the right to distribute the material. The libraries are not distributing the material unfairly. Authors who do not want libraries to make fair use of their materials, despite having been compensated by the libraries for said use, must bear the burden of giving notice.
But the publishers already opted-out when printed the copyright notice on the title page of the books!
The copyright notice means the publishers agreed to allow the libraries to use their works fairly, as prescribed by the copyright law. The libraries are using the works fairly and complying with the law; Google is the libraries' agent. Publishers who wish to burden the libraries are responsible for providing notice.
Google Print, on the other hand, obtains only one copy and uses it worldwide.
You appear grossly unfamiliar with the program. Google Print obtains zero copies. Google Print, acting on behalf of the libraries, scans the libraries' copies and creates an index.
You have overlooked this essential element of the enterprise. It suggests you may have overlooked much more.
id rather have no books at all, then a half a book
Google Print, alas, does not address your needs. It addresses the needs of people who need to find a book. Once these people find a book, they are able to take steps to have the book, the whole book.
If it is fair use, then making it opt-out is just a courtesy.
It is fair use, and the opt-out clause reduces the expense to the librarians of defending themselves against meritless suits. Making works locable clearly benefits those who hold the rights to the sale of those works. Those who do not wish a work to be locable should document that they have some standing.
The rights holder has to give their permission for you to make a copy.
Who exactly holds the rights is unknown in many cases. The burden properly belongs on the party who wishes to restrict the rights granted to the librarians to make the works locable, and not on the librarians to seek out the party they have previously compensated and ask permission to do something they are entitled to do.
Fair Use has only applied when you aren't making a PROFIT from the use.
You are mistaken. Fair use applies to reviewers, who make a profit from selling their essays which include excerpts from the works reviewed. Fair use applies to parodists, who make a profit from selling their lampoons which include characters unmistakably derived from the works mocked.
#I'm already logged in. Why are you telling me the page is unavailable?
As part of our efforts to protect a book's copyright, a set of pages in every in-copyright book will be unavailable to all users.
# I really need to see more of this book. What can I do?
Google Print helps you discover books, not read them online. To read the whole book, we encourage you to use the "Buy this book" link to purchase it online or the "Find this in a library" link to look for a local library that has it.
The libraries have an undisputed right to index their legally-acquired holdings. The burden properly falls on the person who wishes to restrict the libraries' rights to assert that claim. Making the books in its collection locable is essential to the just purpose of a library.
Slashdot Mirror
Google are not library employees or agents and what Google is making is not simply an index so none of your points have anything to do with this.
You are mistaken. Google is acting as an agent of the libraries to index the libraries' own lawfully-held collections so that the libraries can effectively carry out their rightful, just, and legitimate mission.
You are mistaken. From the Google Print Library Project FAQ:
Please, do take a look at the screenshots: http://print.google.com/googleprint/screenshots.h
is not substantially similar to this:
2) Libraries have the right to produce catalogs of their holdings. Reading a book for the purpose of preparing a catalog does not constitute "making a reproduction."
3) Libraries are allowed small quotations from a work a permitted in catalogs, and a work with multiple subjects may have multiple entries, each with its own small quote.
They are making a copy of the entire work, as opposed to some small portion of it.
1) There are much more efficient ways to implement an index to a collection of books than a plaintext UTF-8 representation. It would be surprising if that is how Google did it.
2) Even if a plaintext UTF-8 represenation of the book were on the system's disk, that representation is never read by a human. An electronic silicon-based mechanism lacks the capacity to be the genuine recipient of a distribution, so the scanning process never results in a distribution.
3) The portions of the work which will be read by humans are small (unless the copyright holder opts in to something more expansive).
The libraries' case is strong.
The last time I tried it, Google returned 2 or 3 pages.
Google returns that many pages only when the copyright holders have explicitly opted in. You have mistaken Google Print's publisher program with Google Library.
Or ask for permission?
The authors' copyrights grant the libraries permission to make the works the libraries purchased discoverable. The libraries do not need to ask permission to exercise those rights.
They certainly do not gain any ability to grant other people the right to copy without limit.
1) Employees and agents of the libraries certainly are not "other people." They certainly have the rights to do what the libraries have the right to do.
2) People employed by libraries as reference librarians certainly have the right to read the books the library owns, and to remember what they read. Reading and remembering does not constitute making a copy. When a patron asks a reference librarian where to find a book about President Johnson, the reference librarian has the right, if he knows, to reply "See such-and-such a book about President Andrew Johnson, the successor to Abraham Lincoln and such-and-such a book about President Lyndon Johnson, the successor to John Kennedy." That the reference librarian referred to his own memory of the books does not mean that the books were, in the sense of the law, "copied" into the reference librarian's brain.
3) British authors are entitled to payment when their books are borrowed, not whenever someone looks at the book in the index of the library's collection. That the index is improved by increasing the number of categories and the precision of the categories under which a book may be located has no bearing on the compensation of British authors.
4) Google Library does not allow patrons to take home copies of the book. Google is not a patron of the library, it is the library's agent.
5) You are mistaken.
Scanning a work makes an encoding, not a reproduction. The encoding could enable someone to make a reproduction, but it is not itself a reproduction. Strictly speaking Google is not making any copies.
The libraries acquire the right to read (and archive) the entire work by purchasing it. The libraries' employees and agents have the right to use the entire work in carrying out the libraries' purposes, one of which is to make works discoverable to the libraries' patrons. For these reasons, Google's indexing is just and legitimate.
If it were Microsoft that decided to copy the contents of every book ever written, /. would be full of posts discussing how easy it would be to hack into the system to actually get the entire contents of the book. But since it was Google that decided to do the copying, no one here thinks there is anything bad about it.
Microsoft prospered with a deliberate strategy of producing slipshod software at lower price. The billions of revenue are, regretably but necessarily, accompanied by a reputation for shoddy work. Community skepticism of Microsoft's ability to execute even a reasonably secure system may hurt Microsoft's feelings, but not (yet) its profitability.
Google's business model requires a strategy of excellence. Because end users do not pay for search results, they will migrate to whichever engine produces superior results. The advertisers will follow the end users. If Google chose a slipshod, "80% is good enough," "all software has bugs so we will ignore your complaints," "if you want that bug fixed you must buy the upgrade," execution, it would lose its users and then its revenues. Consequently, Google is moved to excellence by the same invisible hand of the marketplace that mires Microsoft in the muck; and this is why the community believes that Google Library will be secure.
The only Google staff who might require access to an entire work through some unrestricted channel would be those working directly on the project; and they would be acting as the libraries' agents and thus commit no violation.
Do you mean the search would respond with something like "There were 427 matches but I can only reveal 423 of them because I have previously revealed 4 to another user who has not yet lost interest."
How do you check out a snippet?
I believe you are overlooking something. Any book bought mistakenly or because the customer wanted to learn one specific thing can be returned. Here is Amazon's policy:
The authors have the right to determine who makes copies of their materials.
You are a mistaken anonymous coward. Copyright holders (who are sometimes the authors) have the right to determine who distributes copies of the works they control. You, as purchaser of a work, have the right to make as many copies as you please. You may not distribute them. You may quote from them in conversation, though.
Google says that the copyright holder may opt out. An organization of authors has no standing because it is not the copyright holder.
Authors could form an organization to which they would cede their rights to request exclusion, and that organization would presumably have standing to request the exclusion of the works of its members. The Author's Guild is not such an organization.
The authors do not own the material. They retain the right to distribute the material. The libraries are not distributing the material unfairly. Authors who do not want libraries to make fair use of their materials, despite having been compensated by the libraries for said use, must bear the burden of giving notice.
But the publishers already opted-out when printed the copyright notice on the title page of the books!
The copyright notice means the publishers agreed to allow the libraries to use their works fairly, as prescribed by the copyright law. The libraries are using the works fairly and complying with the law; Google is the libraries' agent. Publishers who wish to burden the libraries are responsible for providing notice.
Google Print, on the other hand, obtains only one copy and uses it worldwide.
You appear grossly unfamiliar with the program. Google Print obtains zero copies. Google Print, acting on behalf of the libraries, scans the libraries' copies and creates an index.
You have overlooked this essential element of the enterprise. It suggests you may have overlooked much more.
id rather have no books at all, then a half a book
Google Print, alas, does not address your needs. It addresses the needs of people who need to find a book. Once these people find a book, they are able to take steps to have the book, the whole book.
If it is fair use, then making it opt-out is just a courtesy.
It is fair use, and the opt-out clause reduces the expense to the librarians of defending themselves against meritless suits. Making works locable clearly benefits those who hold the rights to the sale of those works. Those who do not wish a work to be locable should document that they have some standing.
The rights holder has to give their permission for you to make a copy.
Who exactly holds the rights is unknown in many cases. The burden properly belongs on the party who wishes to restrict the rights granted to the librarians to make the works locable, and not on the librarians to seek out the party they have previously compensated and ask permission to do something they are entitled to do.
Fair Use has only applied when you aren't making a PROFIT from the use.
You are mistaken. Fair use applies to reviewers, who make a profit from selling their essays which include excerpts from the works reviewed. Fair use applies to parodists, who make a profit from selling their lampoons which include characters unmistakably derived from the works mocked.
Google Print removes from its index any work whose copyright holder wishes it removed. Your point is vapid.
The libraries have an undisputed right to index their legally-acquired holdings. The burden properly falls on the person who wishes to restrict the libraries' rights to assert that claim. Making the books in its collection locable is essential to the just purpose of a library.
Authors' rights are subject to libraries' rights. GooglePrint is acting as the librarie's agent.
Authors who tell Google not to index their books do not get their books indexed.
Please take steps to reduce your ignorance, or at least your certitude.