Google Responds to Authors Guild Lawsuit 383
Phoe6 writes "Google has responded to the Authors' Guild lawsuit of "massive copyright infringement". They point out that the Library Project is 'fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews.'"
This is no different... (Score:4, Insightful)
omg... (Score:3, Insightful)
a well, if you ask me there is nothing wrong with the way google does this. they do not make the entire book availible, only very small parts of it. and if I remember right, amazon has been doing the same thing too for quite some time.. they just didn't have a search engine to search through ALL the books.. you could only search in one.
I really don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Copyright Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Industry groups are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like very time someone comes up with some cool thing that makes the consumer's life easier, the affected industry panicks and attempts to get the technology quashed. In this case I'd think that authors would want their material easily referenced in part, because they might actually sell copies if people need the information. Without something like this available, authors have more chance of remaining in obscurity or never having the chance to share their work with a larger audience.
Industry groups are just dumb.
Should be Opt-In procedure (Score:4, Insightful)
From Google, re: removing your book.
"If you're not a Google Print partner and want us to avoid your books, you'll need to provide us with a small amount of information about yourself as well as a list of the books you don't want in Google Print. Unless you specify otherwise, we'll use your information only to verify that you are indeed the copyright holder of that particular book."
The Internet is free (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, to be honest, times change. Because Web search engines existed before today's copyright madness, they've been effectively grandfathered in. Libraries are the same way; if they were invented today the Author's Guild would probably be lobbying against them.
Re:Copyright Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate America of course won't be happy until you pay a per-word usage fee for reading a library book.
Re:I really don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)
Opt-In doesn't work for out-of-print books (Score:5, Insightful)
And as a practical matter, Amazon/A9 already took care of indexing the books whose publishers are willing to opt-in.
We gotta stop this approach now. (Score:5, Insightful)
No doubt there are two problems with this: the first seems to be that authors (to the best of my knowledge) haven't been asked either piecemeal or via organizations like the Authors' Guild for permission. The second is that Google will no doubt be making money as a result of providing this service and everybody else wants a cut.
However, we have reached an unfortunate point with copyright and fair use where we'd rather halt innovation than admit that copyright holders' expectations have reached a point of making it cost- and time-prohibitive to meet their demands and are to the point of stagnating not only the public domain but technologies and services that deliver or even touch upon copyrighted content. In this sense, creating a scenario that is not unlike the movie industry's dire predictions about the VCR in the early 80s.
It would be best, of course, for Google to attempt to work out an amiable solution with authors without crippling their service to an unreasonable extent, but I feel that the intent of fair use (if not its prevailing interpretation) falls in their favor... as does the bottom-line for both Google and the membership of the Authors' Guild.
Re:no shit (Score:3, Insightful)
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
Ahhh yes, but is the *main* reason Google is doing this indexing because they are looking out for research interests or for their own bottom line in advertising revenue?
If we ignore their other intent and instead concentrate on their true reason for doing this, then the picture is a different one.
Re:This is no different... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no shit (Score:4, Insightful)
The Google index of the book must contain the entire text. This means they have reproduced a substantial portion of the work (all of it) internally.
Opt-In makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
While I can understand some of the angst people are directing at Google, here's the real issue:
How the hell do you practically determine (let alone contact) the current copyright holder for books that have long been out of print?
Amazon hasn't faced this problem because they actually sell books. Amazon is only scanning and making searchable those books that it can obtain and sell -- and hence can contact the publisher. It's not an issue of Amazon being "honorable" and Google not.
Google is going to be rendering searchable books that you can't find on Google, or in Barnes & Noble, but only in your library, or maybe a distant university library. If they had the burden of tracking down who, if anyone, still cares about the book, it would remain lost to you. What Google is doing is simply saying, "if you care about your book, just let us know."
And then when you contact Google, proving you're actually the copyright holder isn't an onerous "hoop" you have to jump through. Frankly, I'm surprised you're complaining about it. Even the DMCA requires copyright holders to prove they hold the copyright when they issue a takedown notice.
Re:Should be Opt-In procedure (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:my.mp3.com (Score:1, Insightful)
mp3.com did A+B+C+D
google is doing A+E+F+G
"A" was found to be illegal. Don't discuss the difference between B,C,D and E,F,G, it's irrelevent. Google is in trouble because of "A".
Re:Google Fanboism (Score:3, Insightful)
Not if it's the functional equivalent of a screen shot.
Re:Copyright Law (Score:3, Insightful)
With regards to the four factors, you have to consider all of them, although fair use is not a simple matter of adding them up; they have differing weights depending on the circumstances involved.
Here, 1) the use is commercial and non-transformative, but does seem to have a significant research aspect to it. I'd call this one largely in favor of authors. 2) The works are both factual and creative, coming out solidly in favor of authors. 3) Google is copying the works in their entirety so as to have them in their database. That users might only see one small excerpt is irrelevant to the reproduction infringement; that's a distribution infringement. As everything is being copied, that's very bad. As for the distribution later, it is more likely that it will involve the important parts of the works than the unimportant parts. This too weighs heavily against Google. 4) It is utterly irrelevant whether a fair use has beneficial impacts on copyright holders; we're only interested in the harm involved. While it doesn't seem as though there would be a great deal of harm, alternatives that involve the copyright holders licensing these materials to Google are likely to be an issue that goes against this project, rather like Texaco.
All in all, I think this is dicey at best. It's certainly not a sure fair use.
Re:Copyright Law (fair-use definitions) (Score:2, Insightful)
IANAL,l #howmuch [copyright.gov] was probably written by them and it says:
but http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.htm
From this I can see many places were Google is going to have a tough time are arguing that their use is fair. I suspect that they'll fall back to just doing books they get permission for. I expect that many publishers will flock to send them lists of works to add to their indexes.
While I accept that Google doesn't show much of the copyrighted work on one page, they are really publishing much of the work within the Google site. I can imagine a program being written to query google over and over again to reverse engineer a full work.
-- Want a more interesting quick read? VerbSap [verbsap.com]
Re:Industry groups are stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
I think these industry groups are just afraid of innovation because they don't see where it will lead... Also once Google has the full text of every book in existence on-line, some third party might be able to steal the data and "liberate" it - that would definitely be bad for them.
Re:Copyright Law (Score:5, Insightful)
So "fair use" isn't avoidable -- it's part of the entire package. If you want to use the restrictions of copyright on your works, you need to allow for fair use of your works as well. You can't pick and choose.
Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's a good point, but note that it's no different from the current Google web search: they have a cached copy of the entire web, including loads of copyrighted material. Is that legal?
-- Brian
Re:This is what I want to know (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this situation is different than the real life library situation you described. At a library you would be probably be paying 10 cents a page or equivalent if you aren't from the US. And even if you are lucky enough to live around a library with free copying or otherwise have access to free copying. Eventually you will be pissing someone off by wasting their resources. Also, depending on the length of work, it would get very tiresome to manually copy every page of a book. Conversaly, if you did it by hacking googles search then it would be a perfect digital copy. Also, depending on how easy google search would be to circumvent (lets say one computer could do it) then it could be done fairly cheaply. Using your home computer and the broadband bandwith while you are asleep or otherwise idle. I see a BIG difference in what google has brought forward with searchable text of copyrighted books.
It's about competition from the public domain. (Score:1, Insightful)
Then travesties like the Sonny-Bonno copyright act that steal from the public domain and keep books in the dark might encounter the broad resistance that they merit.
Re:Copyright Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Quoting an entire book is not fair use. Indeed. I'm going to use your work without permission in a commercial business for selling ads, until you tell me not to.
That isn't ethical.
For over a decade people on the net have complained about having to opt out rather than in. Whether it is spam, realplayer taking control of your
But now we're being told it is OK to have to opt out of someone using your work for commercial gain without permission, and it's OK to bundle a toolbar in with an unrelated VPN client.
Google are the new billionare bully on the block. Amazon are doing equally cool things with book searchs, only are doing them with the author's permission, why can't google be as equally professionally courteous?
Re:Google are wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:From a Librarian (Score:2, Insightful)
Better to let Google be, because you're likely to have a stronger case against the guy that is actually going to harm you. Then you can go and sue them.
Something like the Google library should be mandated by law anyway. I'm sick of copyright holders restricting their work without any compensation to the people that have granted them the right in the first place. It's a bit like buying a car - you can drive off, but if your check doesn't clear, then legally you don't own the car. Copyright should be the same, if you don't do something to make the work useful to the public, then too bad, the work goes back to the public.
Re:Playing devil's advocate for a sec (Score:3, Insightful)
Under Fair Use, the Idea is that you are allowed to copy things to DO something with it. In general the idea is that if you are copying the whole thing, then you arent doing something with the work, but are merely using the work, and dont fall into fair use. However, there are cases, where even copying of an entire work, if the use of that entire work is sufficiently transformative, is fair use.
So for instance, I am allowed to incorporate a picture of a copyrighted picture in my artwork. Evev if the picture I am using is a full copy, provided that my use is transformative. If google's use of the entire book is not to have the book, but a substantive transformation (and an index has been held to be sufficiently transformative before), then it may well be protected under Fair Use. Even if they are copying the whole thing.
Re:Google-Watch wrote to The Authors Guild in July (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes and the web as we know it would not exist. Just remember that the relationship between search engines and web sites is a two way street, where the search engine gets content, the web site potentially gets traffic.
Re:Copyright Law (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that is NOT what Google is doing. From the referenced link:
You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that this certainly falls within Fair Use under U.S. copyright law.
Re:Copyright Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is the question I cannot get around:
It would appear that they cannot. However, nowadays most copyright infingement claims have to do with distribution and not copying. On the Internet, this is especially true since copies are required for transmission and display. Every website you view, for instance, is copied by several ISPs as it gets to you. Also, the RIAA does not seem to sue people for having songs on their hard drive. They tend to sue people for allowing other people to access those songs on their hard drives.
Given all that, I think the real question is:
If the answer is yes, Google will lose. If the answer is no, everybody will win.
Re:Google will lose (Score:3, Insightful)
I am, of course, not a lawyer, but I know a bit about copyright law.
Unfortunately, I replied to a previous post before getting to yours, so I will have to repeat myself somewhat. On the other hand, since you are a lawyer, it will be easier to summarise my point as you are already familiar with the issues involved.
First, let me say that although I agree with your legal assessment, I disagree with your moral assessment. Whether or not Google is going to profit by its actions is irrelevant. The fact that they are going to digitize so many books should be applauded. What they have already done would take publicly funded programs decades or centuries (if it were to happen at all). If you do not believe me, just take a look at Project Gutenberg [promo.net]. It took them from 1970 to 2001 or 2002 to scan a mere 10,000 books. The public library systems of the world have scanned zero or close to zero (considering the number of works in the public domain, you should be asking yourself if the public libraries are doing their job at all). Google is going to manage millions in a few years. This is a good thing, whether or not you like Google personally.
Now, on to the legal issues. Technically, Google is in massive violation of copyright. Of that, there can be no question. The question is the relevancy and enforcability of those provisions in copyright law.
Technically, by the fact that you are viewing this comment, you are violating my copyrights. I have written this comment. It is stored in a fixed and tangible form. You have copied it into your computer's memory (Mai v. Peak) to view it. I have not given you written permission to view it (which, legally, is the only kind of permission that matters). In the mean time, you have also created infringers of all of the intermediary ISPs between yourself and Slashdot, so you are also liable for contributory infringement. I could sue you and win.
Why does this not happen every day? It does not happen because society has already accepted that these forms of copying are acceptable. Call them fair use. Call them your right to access the materials. Call these forms of copying whatever you want. No matter how you look at it, the Internet itself is responsible for massive (technical) copyright infringement. In fact, if copyight were enforced as the lawmakers wrote it, you could not even use the web without calling every admin and asking for a written contract before you accessed that given site.
So, the question, as I just put it is:
As I pointed out in my earlier post, the RIAA, the current, undisputed king of copyright lawsuits does not even sue for copying. They sue for distribution. If they really wanted to, they could sue anybody with MP3s of any music over which their sponsors had rights. In fact, they could even sue anybody using a CD player because the player has to load the data into memory and convert it into an analog signal before a given person can listen to it. From the standpoint of copyright law, then, it is impossible to even listen to music without violating copyright.
In such an age, how can Google be taken to task for violating copyright in the same way that everyone does?
Re:For those who do not understand (Score:3, Insightful)
The work you mention is in Google Print only because the publisher asked for it to be. Part of the terms are
From TFA:
Google provides a screenshot [blogspot.com] of how an indexed excerpt looks.
Do you understand now? Thanks!