Google faces massive copyright suit

[bargainbloodhound]

A group representing more than 8,000 authors on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against search engine Google, alleging that its scanning and digitising of library books constitutes a "massive" copyright infringement.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39219611,00.htm

[accentnepal]

Did they think no one would notice???

I have felt for some time that a micro-payment system would resolve this - pay a penny a page -- or even a HUNDREDTH  of a penny a page, to view anything on the net. The cost to the user would be insignificant, but those with good content could do well.

This does not resolve the issue of getting your content noticed in the first place. Perhaps there could be a few random listings in search result pages, somehow screened for spam.

Wild ideas? Probably. But it looks like balancing copyright and access is going to be decided in the courts, likely by some old men who know little of the Internet.

[rose]

"It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied."

very true.

[mandy]

...the American Association of Publishers has sued Google over its Google Print book scanning initiative, following suit (literally, pardon the pun) with the Author's Guild, which did the same a month ago.

The AAP represents over 300 publishers, including some of the world's largest: Pearson Education, Wiley, McGraw-Hill, Simon and Schuster.

full article: http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogt...oogle.html

[Nat]

Google’s stand here is that since it will display only excerpts of its scanned material, it should be allowed to make whole copies of books without obtaining permission.

http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000930064111/

That is the most ridiculous assumption I ever heard.  Even I know you can't do that. They are lucky that they were even allowed to disly excerpts because many publishers and authors don't even allow that without written permission from each publisher.

I just looked at 3 different books I have right here and they all say the same or very similar thing:

"No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher".

I've seen that same copyright issue in most published books. I would have thought Google being as big as they are they would have checked with a lawyer first and not assumed they could do whatever they want.

I almost hate to say it but they deserve to be sued in this case (about the books).  I wrote a book a few years back and I went through the trouble of having it copyrighted and I remember having that above or similar copyright issue in written in the book and I ballistic when I saw someone posting parts of my book on the internet - I got in touch with the person and they removed it from the internet but their response was, they wanted to help others who didn't have the book - I reminded them of the copyright and said that people can purchase the book from since the copyright on the book is still in effect and I still had plenty of copies of the book left.  Had that person contacted me first and asked for written permission I don't know - I maybe have been understanding and said yes or I may have said know but because the person assumed it was okay I played hardball with them.  So I side with the publishers on this one.  Google should have known better.

[bargainbloodhound]

That is the most ridiculous assumption I ever heard.

Google thinks it is exempt from the rules that everyone else lives by.

One example: Google thinks that it is its right to be given access to crawl any other site and to display the results from the crawl on its pages in search results (Googlebot's bandwidth usage on one of our sites last month was over 10 GB and when googlebot does a deep crawl it can put a strain on our servers/slow them down).  On the other hand, the terms of use of the Google web site prohibit other search engines/metasearch engines from crawling the Google web site and displaying the results on their pages (Google's reasoning: the spiders/crawlers would use up its bandwidth and put a strain on its servers).

[Nat]

Silly me, I actually forgot.  I forgot how I created a website a few years back and eventually closed up the site and was shocked to find that people were still able to find out what I had on my site because Google had a cache version of MY site in THEIR cache files through Google searches.  How could I have forgotten the months of snarly emails back and forth until they finally removed my pages from their caching and keeping it posted on the internet without my consent.

Yes, they really turning into a bunch.....a bunch of....hmmm, I just can't find the right words to describe them.  :

[bargainbloodhound]

The Google Blog has a couple of long posts from 10/19 defending the legality of Google Print.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/w...print.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/p...print.html

This quote from Google's CEO in the 2nd blog post:

...copyright-holders are free to send us a list of titles that they don't want included in the Google Print index.

For some, this isn't enough. The program's critics maintain that any use of their books requires their permission. We have the utmost respect for the intellectual and creative effort that lies behind every grant of copyright. Copyright law, however, is all about which uses require permission and which don't; and we believe (and have structured Google Print to ensure) that the use we make of books we scan through the Library Project is consistent with the Copyright Act, whose "fair use" balancing of the rights of copyright-holders with the public benefits of free expression and innovation allows a wide range of activity, from book quotations in reviews to parodies of pop songs -- all without copyright-holder permission.

[accentnepal]

That is the rub - fair use. You can reproduce a portion of a copyright work (you still have to say where you got it). According to Stanford University (found on Google):

"Fair use is a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism."

"... a judge has a great deal of freedom when making a fair use determination and the outcome in any given case can be hard to predict.

The four factors judges consider are:

  1. the purpose and character of your use
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market."

The above quotes are from:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_an.../chapter9/
reproduced as fair use(!)

Commercial use is more difficult to qualify as "fair" and loss of potential income to the copyright owner is a major consideration. So if Google teases the books - gives enough information that people go on to buy the books then everybody will be happy. If they give away the core then they will be in trouble.

Note this --- Google has not put any of this on the net yet (as far as I know). No harm/no foul. They might be wanting to get the legal basis cleared up this way, and, based on that will structure their eventual offering.

[Jen]

[quote author=accentnepal link=topic=472.msg3650#msg3650 date=1130056394]
Note this --- Google has not put any of this on the net yet (as far as I know). No harm/no foul. They might be wanting to get the legal basis cleared up this way, and, based on that will structure their eventual offering.
[/quote]

Actually, Google Print has been up on the net at least since the beginning of the year.  I've been using their beta services since January.

http://print.google.com