Fair Use?
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Google decided a short while back to scan books that are in some libraries, notably Harvard and Stanford, and make them available for searching and (hopefully) drive sales. However when publishers balked amid copyright concerns, Google had a new idea. Their decision was that the publishers needed to inform Google which copyrighted material it cannot use.
Boy that turns the traditional view on its ear. Usually you must seek some relief from copyright holders before you can use something in your work. Unless you are trying to fall under one of the "fair use" doctrines that allow copies for academic work and a few other users. The current approach by Google puts the burden on the publishers and authors to decline permission for their work to be scanned and indexed.
If it were my business, I'd be wary of copyright law. The copyright holders have had good luck in the courts procuring damages for unauthorized uses. However I'm torn with Google's approach. They are taking works that are freely available for the public to view in these libraries. So common sense would dictate some type of "sharing" mechanism, perhaps even licensing something with the libraries would work.
However this ignores a couple of things. First of all the library doesn't necessarily have the right to license content, and even if it did, the content is limited in that it must be shared between patrons. However Google would essentially be the same as if the library purchased one copy of the latest Harry Potter book, copied and bound it, and then made those copies available. Something that any publisher would quickly sue them for.
I think what Google wants to do is admirable and it can help solve some of the issues with the web today (I'll write about those soon). But they're a commercial concern and realistically for something like this to work it should be done at the distric level, or the libraries should work with Google to make the indexes available at the libraries. Perhaps if they make the text searchable, but a very limited amount of the material available online this makes more sense, but I think this is one venture that's doomed to fail.
There's something to be done here, but I think this is the wrong approach. And I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft looks to one up them here. With all the attacks Microsoft has come under, making a free index available to all public libraries is one search area they could make up some goodwill.
Steve Jones
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Each book has a statement of copyright in the first few pages - to ignore it and copy it anyway and wait for someone to complain is the height of arrogance, and here in the UK they would be severely (and rightly) spanked silly in the courts.
I may be thicker than a whale omelette, but why don't they mount an advertising campaign within the publisihing industry to ASK FOR MATERIAL ? - they've got the resources to do this thing the right way round and not annoy anyone.
If not, good luck Google dudes, hope you've got lots of spare cash you're willing to throw away...
Tim
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I've never seen it happen and therefore can not assert this fact ... but I thought whales gave birth to live young... you know ...that whole mammal thing...
It might be cheaper to pay off those who take offense rather than the cost of getting permission...
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What if the whale is the diner rather than the donor?
My hovercraft is full of eels.
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I don't think they have a legal basis to republish, but the indexing for searching may be legal. It's an interesting idea and I'm not sure how I feel about this one.
I think it's great to be able to search books for something, but the rights of the copyright holder are important. If I didn't have copyright to things I create, it is a determent to furthering of the arts. I know publishers and distributors often take advantage of authors in some senses, but I think that copyright law is important.
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Well if the library of congress indexed it all, then it would not be an issue.
Or let google spin of a non profit arm. And then fair use will apply.
Damn google needs our cv's
One of these days I should hit that place. The LOC that is and maybe more often a marineland or two.
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And hold on. I've a soapbox to stand on. Regarding the libraries, I feel it should be neccessary and mandated that all electronic publishers of information be leveed a fee to assisting in building and maintaining a global library system.
We forget how often knowledge has been lost to fires, ravages, or wars, and other cataclysmic events over the millenniumm, should we, as enlightened people, with the possible resources be mandated to preserve such info for the future?
Google should raise the bar and while they have the means make it a pillar of the foundations of society by making this gesture of making the world index once and for all available to all, if not arranging for such a place on the internet.
My soapbox is now free.
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Do you mind if I borrow your soapbox? I've got a pile of soap that needs tidying away.....
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well I was hungry and all out of crayons...
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This is one of those things where a company is doing something TO USEFUL, and too cool. More and more often killer apps are shut downn for legal instead of technical reasons:
http://www.eff.org/endangered/
This is going to happen more and more. Information becomes free that otherwise wasn't; and those that have a vested interest in keeping the information proprietary are fighting back.
In this case it is just meta-data; google is NOT republishing the text from these books. They are making the text searchable; and displaying small snippets of it to give context to the search words. This is very similar to what Amazon does, but nobody's complaining about them (probably because they are trying to sell the book, which google is not). Obviously this is yet another thing that is way to useful and user empowering; so most likely they will get into trouble.
Really, in today's corporate friendly atmosphere, I'm suprised that libraries are allowed to exist. They've been offering stuff like this for years...indexing books for searching, sharing, providing materials for people who can't afford them.
We have to make some decisions about how useful we are going to allow the internet to be. I can see a day when people are BEGGING google to index their site/book/movie, etc. Industries have been making money doing this for years; and here comes a company that can do it for practically free!
I don't have any easy answers to this. Except that, when content providers are the consumers, then this will not be an issue. In spite of legal wrangling, we are starting to see the results of USING the internet instead of BREAKING it.
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