Reining in Google 552
CDPatten writes "The Washington Times has an op-ed piece by two writers typically
on opposing sides of the isle, Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr. The article is
brief, but overwhelmingly opposes the Google
Print service. From the article 'Not only is Google trying to rewrite copyright
law, it is also crushing creativity ...Google envisions a world in which all content is
free; and of course, it controls the portal through which Internet user's access
that content. It would completely devalue everyone else's property and massively
increase the value of its own.'. It sounds to me like they might
be slightly peeved that Google is resuming the scanning.
Indexing or Caching? (Score:5, Insightful)
The roam the web - they take local copies of every web page - they index those pages - then they display a 'snippet' of the page in response to a search query.
Same deal with the books. Scan them into a private archive, index the archive - display the title and a sentence or two of content to provide context. I see no problem with that.
What is problematic (both with the Web indexing and Book indexing) is the Google 'cache' - where you can get the content of the web page from Googles cache if the original web page is missing or slow. That is (in my opinion) a breach of the Web page owner's copyright - and would be a breech of the book's copyright too.
However, the indexing service that Google (and others) provide for the Web is the only thing that makes the Internet useful. Doing that for books would be of HUGE benefit to mankind and absolutely must be allowed - even if copyright law has to be changed to make it happen.
Let's think carefully about the 'Google cache' thing though - that's dubious because it allows people access to content without going through the content provider's access mechanisms. That's the thing that deprives the author of value. Indexing actually increases the value of a work because it allows people to find it - and therefore increases the pool of potential purchasers by an enormous factor.
Google indexing should be the savior of printed media and authors should support it.
Google caching is morally dubious.
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:3, Interesting)
For things the "content providers" already made publicly available, for crying out loud. What you want to do, is applying extra restrictions management over what was emitted to the public. If you want that "content" to be private, you know how to restrict it in the first place, Google will obey your request.
And for books, Google Print scans books for which the copyright has already expired. Promoting them is a huge boon to the society, to everyone except for publishers who want revenues from books that are supposed to be available to the public.
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:5, Informative)
And for books, Google Print scans books for which the copyright has already expired.
No. That's the Yahoo and Microsoft versions. Google will scan copyrighted books without explicit permission. See this [csmonitor.com] article, by way of example.
"The Google project
The OCA [Open Content Alliance] will seek to digitize all public domain works, but only copyright material for which they gain explicit consent from the publisher. Made up of Google competitors Yahoo! and the Microsoft Network (MSN)"
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:2)
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:2)
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:3, Insightful)
The conflict of Google caching is not that they scan pages and use that content for indexing and search results, but that they allow the cached content to remain available even after the authors have changed the site so those keywords no longer exist. I frankly think it's difficult to justify that use of caching. That's the goal of the Internet Archives Project, but in Google's case it would make good sense to offer the cache-based version only if the original site is down (or /.ed).
(For people who are eager to distribute content but who want to minimize their bandwidth charges for their own servers, it would actually make excellent sense for Google to offer some special metatag to encourage cache availability all of the time. (Though they ought to offer some kind of service for site owners to get a "hit report" for the cached access directly from Google. Obvious implementation would be with a metatag that authorizes an address for a robotic query--only the site owner could add that to the webpage.))
The conflict with the publishers and authors is *completely* different. However, I don't blame Google for trying to adapt to the new technologies, and you can't blame the defenders of the old system for crying when those new technologies are threatening the very existence of their system. To heck with the children! What about the money!?!
Libraries have always had a tenuous relationship with publishers, because borrowed books are only sold once. The argument there was that the public derived large enough benefits that it was okay. Also, the libraries are seen as kind of good publicity and not very accessible, so they (the publishers) can still still books, and perhaps even make more sales to a more literate population.
The Internet is changing things radically. The recent story about newspapers suffering is only a different tip of the same iceberg. From that perspective, the only solution is to ban the technology, which seems unlikely.
When the Internet library is banned, only outlaws will have libraries?
In conclusion, I think the publishers are doomed. The Internet is not going to be banned. It doesn't matter if Google or someone else does it. The books are going to become available via the Web, and the publishers can try to adapt or they can become extinct. Google just wants to be first for the same reason Amazon wanted to be first.
(And the CSS weirdness in the preview and editing areas is over here, too? Looks like an accessible page now. I'm still wondering if it's somehow linked to the latest abuses of anonymous moderation...)
Is it always in the interest of content providers? (Score:5, Insightful)
...on their web site...
But who are we to say that for someone else's material?
It's very easy to take the public-spirited view in any intellectual property debate, be it on copyright or patents or whatever. Allowing anyone to control access to or use of information is (almost) always against the public interest in any isolated case and once the information has already been published. But you have to consider the bigger picture, which is why concepts like copyright exist in law.
Personally, I agree with the original reply that started this subthread: things like Google Cache and the Wayback Machine are on very dubious ground, both legally and ethically. It isn't a no-brainer that these caching systems are of benefit to the original creators of the material. I've enumerated some reasons that I believe this before, but probably the three most important are:
Caching/archival services disrupt all of these things, potentially damaging the interests of the content provider. Those interests are protected by copyright to encourage them to offer the content to the public in the first place, and thus I have a problem with violating the letter and/or spirit of copyright law to set up a cache. If you want to offer such a service, by all means do, but make it opt-in; "You can just disable it with robots.txt/by e-mailing us at.../by setting up a password" really isn't good enough.
Although commercial entities can be killed off by the unfortunate side effects of dubious caching, this isn't automatically a money issue, either. For example, I help to run a relatively large web site for a local club, and we rely on server logs to see which links visitors do and don't follow and which pages they want to get to from which other pages. We use this information to improve the links and menus on our site. We have no commercial stake here; this is a non-profit organisation, providing the site purely to help our members and anyone else with common interests. However, if everyone started seeing our site indirectly via Google Cache or whatever, we couldn't do this because our server logs would be empty, and therefore we couldn't continue to update our site to better provide for our visitors.
We also update our content regularly, sometimes even providing information in an afternoon that's relevant only to the same evening. Yes, we make mistakes occasionally too, and have to fix them. Having a cache that's out of date by even a couple of hours could spoil a whole evening for one of our members who missed a last-minute announcement or saw cached data that was copied while there was a mistake on the site that had since been fixed.
None of this is in either our interests or that of our members/random visitors interested in our stuff, and there's not a single financial consideration in any of the above problems. So no, Google Cache isn't automatically serving the interests of either the copyright holder or the general public, and more to the point, it's not up to them to decide what's in the best interests of others and whether it's OK to break the law on that basis.
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indexing a web site leads people to that actual web site, encouraging the user to do the things that will make money for that web site. In this case, Google makes money helping others make money.
Indexing a printed work in no leads to the user actually doing anything that will make money for the person(s) responsible for that work. Although Google makes money in this scenario, the owners of that content do not. This is what we call exploitation.
And I wholeheartedly agree with your opinion of the cache.
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:3, Insightful)
> make money for the person(s) responsible for that work.
How not?
How is this different from the list of citations at the end of a scientific paper?
How else do you lead someone to something that'll make money for the author?
1) You quote the title of the work, the name of the author and the name of the publisher. I'm pretty sure Google will do that.
2) You might provide a link to a website where you can purchase the book. How long do you think it'll be before Google are making money by pointing you to Amazon and taking a click-though fee for that?
I'm 100% certain that indexing printed works will be a win for the authors and publishers.
What's much less certain is how much of the work Google could quote without destroying sales - their usual two lines of contextual quotation is *occasionally* enough to prevent me from clicking through to the underlying web site. If you were looking for the atomic weight of cadmium and enough of the target were quoted to tell you the answer - why would you click through? (Well, you might...but you wouldn't have to). In that case, the original web page author might be denied some advertising revenue or other valuable statistical data that he was seeking when putting up that information for free access.
I think a couple of sentances of content is enough to verify that the web site is talking about the chemistry of Cadmium - and is not an artist supplier selling Cadmium Yellow paint. But it's a thin line.
But what about books? I think the threshold for a book is much larger than for a web site. I would be buy the book just in order to read the rest of that paragraph? I think not. I think quoting *more* of the book is useful to both the author and to the person doing the searching.
The cache is a different matter...there are many good reasons (listed ably by others earlier in this thread) why I might want my copy of the page to be the only one people access. I let them read it - but I might prefer that copying were not allowed.
There is also a distinction here between what IS legal and what OUGHT TO BE legal. Both are worthy of discussion in the context of "Should the copyright law be changed in order to *clearly* allow indexing?" - which is obviously a huge public good.
Empirical evidence suggests otherwise (Score:3, Insightful)
Doing anything like, oh... buying the book?
While O'Reilly Books are seriously cool people, they aren't publishing just for the fun of it. They're out to make some money (although they're not completely averse to having fun [oreilly.com] while doing it). They're also, judging by bookshelves in local geek circles and by the cover prices I've been paying, doing a decent job of it.
So why does O'Reilly Books have the entire (conventional) index of a HELL of a lot of their books [google.com] available on the web? Free. No charge. Google searchable even. Why? Well, they might be trying to drum up interest in the Safari on-line library [oreilly.com], but I don't think that's it. I think that, like Baen's Free Library [baen.com], they "expect this to make us money by selling books".
I would also suggest you (and Schroeder and Barr) play with Google Scholar [google.com] before sounding off. Google is already indexing copyrighted materials, many of which are in journals that cost a couple hundred bucks a year to subscribe to. However, they don't show the full text of the article in many cases (unless the publisher wants to). You will see the usual two lines worth of context, and there's usually a link to an abstract. If you search from a .edu IP address, your school may have a electronic subscription that Google will link to. Otherwise... get up off your lazy backside and get thee to a library. When Schroeder and Barr are wondering what Google may mean by "Snippets", this ought to give them a clue about what Google plans to do. Google's lawyers are not stupid; I'd be suprised if even full paragraphs show up on material not yet lasped to the public domain.
I'll also note that Google Scholar has a distinct lack of ads on it. The Google Library might not be ad-free, but it will probably be limited to ads trying to sell books or related materials. Gee, what might that do for the publishing industry?
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:2)
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Caching is "morally dubious"? (Score:2)
That's silly. Google caching is, morally, no different from anybody else's caching. The HTTP protocol has been designed, since early days, to support caching. Caching is a good thing, generally, because it speeds up access to web pages, decreases network congestion, and mitigates the "slashdot effect". There are a huge number of caches deployed across the internet, and you may be reading this content via a cache without even knowing it. Lots of ISPs deploy HTTP caches, and so do many businesses, colleges and universities.
Your "moral" argument against Google caching is that it allows people access to content without going through the content provider's access mechanisms. That's the thing that deprives the author of value. But this argument also applies to HTTP protocol caching. My counter-argument is that caching is an inherent part of the design of the WWW, and it provides a social benefit by allowing the web to operate faster and more efficiently.
If you operate a web site, you should know that your content is subject to caching, because that's how the web works. If you don't want your content to be cached, you can opt out. For example, you can use <META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE"> to prevent HTTP caching, and you can use <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE"> to prevent Google caching.
Doug Moen
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:2)
Now I am not saying that it is bad to index books. I am saying that there is a difference in the procedure.
But this was to be expected. You deprive the printing companies from a bit of their control over their content. They will fight, as RIAA and MPAA are fighting and hopefully they will lose.
That said, with a decent OCR program, it would be pretty trivial to write a script that just dumps a book from the snippets provided by Google. So there is a security issue right there.
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google only makes available a limited selection of the book at a time. that is, you can see pages 1, 2, and 3 while I may actually see pages 100,101, and 102. If we are limited to how many pages can be seen, then clearly that is fair use.
Now, the argument is that I can piece the book together via the google mechanism. Yes, that is true. It is work on my part, but it can occur. Of course, I can also scan it myself. The very nature of doing that, though, indicates that I am the one breaking the copyright. In both cases, I had to work at breaking the copyright mechanism.
So no, Google is not breaching copyright.
You are confusing two issues (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll spell this out even more clearly. I have written book X recently. They have an entire copy of my book sitting on their servers. (It may in fact be an index and hence a derivative work from which the complete original can be constructed, but that is still subject to copyright.) They are using their complete copy of X to make profit. I don't see a penny of this except maybe occasionally someone will buy my book X because Google mentioned it. And there's certain no law that compels me to accept free advertising in recompense for abuse of my copyright.
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:2)
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Insightful)
A used book stores pays the owner of a book a .25, places it on its shelf and then sells it for $2.00.
A coffe shop owner sees the book, buys it, and leaves it hanging around their shop for customers to read.
These 2 examples are no different. Yes, I am aware that some book sellers are pushing the idea that they should get money from the 2'nd sale (they should not), and that is why I showed the second example.
In fact, the place that I have seen Google's book search in use was in tech book stores in Denver. They are using it to help sell more books (I bought 3 more books than I wanted; damn search). So clearly, Google is NOT abusing copyright.
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I do see the difference. The the parent's example the publishers lost a sale because a consumer purchased the book in a secondary market. Google does NOT intend to redistribute content. They are making ONE copy of each book for their own used, not to resell. Now they are going to use that content to enhance their searches, but I don't know if that's against fair use.
The publishers are just pissed that Google's making money and they aren't, it has nothing to do with copyright or fair use. If it's such an issue, why don't they just encourage all of their authors to opt-out and setup their own search index to compete. That's not what they want at all, they just want a bigger piece of the pie than they are already going to get from purchases of searched books. Don't assign altruistic values to the publishing companies, they are just greedy like everyone else.
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Insightful)
It's always been my understanding that Copyright doesn't cover MAKING copies, only DISTRIBUTING them. There is a HUGE difference in the two. This means that I can go to the store, buy a CD, and rip it to MP3 to put on my iPod. That makes 3 copies of the work (the rip to WAV (even if it's just in RAM, it's still a copy), compression to MP3, putting it on my iPod). Am I violating copyright there? The courts say no (IIRC, the lawsuit against the Rio covered this). However, I am violating copyright if I give someone else a copy of my MP3s.
As I see it, Google Print is pretty much the same. They index the copies they make (and keep to themselves) and give only a few lines of text in the search results. That's like me giving 1 second of an MP3 to a friend. It's excerpting and generally accepted as fair use. Honestly, for public domain works, I don't see a problem with making the entire text downloadable. For in copyright works, I see no moral or legal problem with giving out only a few lines of text and a listing of what book it came from. Obviously, they can't let me download the whole book, and I see no indication that Google intends to allow any such thing. They aren't so stupid as to not realize that is a clear violation.
If publishers were smart, they would set up a website that google could link results to for purchasing the book. Even just linking to Amazon would be great. I could get on, search, find a book that looks to have the info I want, click buy and it shows up a few days later. Perfect. But no, they just have to keep thier buggy whips moving....... Copyright isn't a guarantee that you can make ever increasing profits by doing the same thing for all eternity. It's a guarantee that I can't give away or sell full copies of your work. Making money on it becomes your problem. If a service like Google indexing your book causes you to loose money, it's your business model that is flawed and needs updating.
It's funny how poeople here revile the RIAA and MPAA for the same sort of antics, but defend book publishers for the same crap. Technology is moving along and your customers want the world to move with it. Your job as an author or publisher is to provide the customers what they want, and find a way to make money out of it. If you can't do that, it's time to step aside for the next generation that can. The future is a steamroller and you're getting run over. Are you going to do something to get ahead of it, or are you going to sit there an be crushed? Doesn't matter one way or the other to me. I'll happily pay whoever is providing the services I want. If nobody is willing to take my money for what I want, I'll find another way, as will a vast majority of people. There IS money to be made here, but you have to change your perspective to make it. Hint: People are more than willing to pay for convience.
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Incorrect. It covers both.
This means that I can go to the store, buy a CD, and rip it to MP3 to put on my iPod. That makes 3 copies of the work (the rip to WAV (even if it's just in RAM, it's still a copy), compression to MP3, putting it on my iPod). Am I violating copyright there? The courts say no (IIRC, the lawsuit against the Rio covered this). However, I am violating copyright if I give someone else a copy of my MP3s.
Technically, both acts, making the copy and distributing it to your friend, are infringing uses. However, you have a defense to the first infringement, aka "fair use", that you would not necessarily have in the second case.
It's a guarantee that I can't give away or sell full copies of your work.
Or partial copies as well, or plagiarized or derivative works. Copyright is much broader than what you suggest.
They index the copies they make (and keep to themselves) and give only a few lines of text in the search results.
But the copies they make are themselves an infringement. The question is whether Google has a fair use defense that would allow them to make these copies. We discussed Google Print in my Copyright class a week or so ago, my copyright professor seems to think that Google is probably engaged in copyright infringement on a mass scale (although in typical law professor fashion, he didn't come right out and say so).
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Informative)
I'll give you a hint. The only possible thing Google could be thought to be infringing on is the right to distribute derivative works. Except that derivative works is defined by the Copyright act as:
The important phrase here is work. A snippet is not a work, nor is a system. A database can be a work, but it is hardly settled law that such a work qualifies as having been "recast, transformed, or adapted" (under the Copyright Act's usage of those terms) -- at any rate, far from "not debatable". Further, the distributing the derived work, not for using it in other ways. And it is certainly the case the making money off of one's work is not a protected right. You'll be hard pressed to find the phrase "commercial benefit" in the Copyright act.Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, copyright law doesn't govern making money off of someone else's copyrighted work. It only governs specific actions - namely, making copies and distributing those copies. For example, I could arguably have a for-profit library, where I buy copies of books, and then rent them out to people (would be tough, since there are free public libraries, but I believe would be essentially legal). Now, in this specific example, I've had to first buy my copies from the publishers, so the publisher and author are getting paid, and probably nobody would care.
But, consider another example. I go to the public library. I read a *LOT* of books. I now decide to publish a newsletter of my book reviews, including maybe a few choice quotes, or even a couple paragraphs of text, and I sell ad space in my newsletter. I've made money off your books, without paying you anything. Am I in violation of copyright law for making book recommendations/reviews? No - even if I include short pieces of your text to illustrate my review/recommendation. That is *fair use*. And this happens all the time. Most newspapers have book review sections, magazines as well, and nobody complains about them.
I personally don't see much difference between what I've outlined above, and what Google is doing. I personally think it comes down to fair use. I suppose, at this point, it will be up to the courts (most likely the Supreme Court) to decide if this constitutes fair use.
The main points of question seem to be, 1) Does scanning/digitizing the entire work, even if Google isn't distributing the entire work, constitute an illegal copy or not, 2) If Google is making only a small portion available to any one searcher, but over the course of thousands of requests, makes the entire work available (albeit piece-by-piece to potentially hundreds of different users), does that constitute illegal copying/distribution (I personally think Google would be on much safer territory here if they only made available like the preface, or a couple paragraphs from the first chapter from the book, so that regardless of what you search on, you would only ever see that one small portion of the work - and *possibly* like the single sentence that the search terms were found in)?
Ultimately, though, as copyright holders fight Google, they may just be killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Authors and publishers need to seriously consider this: do you want your competitors works to be findable through Google Print, but *your* work not to be? The outcome of Google 'losing' this legal battle would simply be that they would continue on, but only indexing and returning search results for public domain books, and books from publishers/authors who have explicitely granted them permission (and many will, as they will see it for the opportunity it is). Do you *really* want your books to be the only books that people *can't* find through Google? You might want to have your book listed, *and* get a royalty from Google. Not gonna happen. Ever. Get over it. Google will just pull you out of the index and move on, and not really care. It would take an industry-wide boycott for Google to care, and again, that's not gonna happen, because it's too tempting to be on Google when your competitors are not.
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is debatable. They aren't republishing the entire book.
If their potentially infringing use decreases the value of the original (i.e. makes a user of gBooks not want to get a copy of the original) then it's probably infringing. If their use increases the likelihood that someone will want to get the original, then it's probably not infringing.
Book reviews depend on this-- they excerpt things all the time without needing permission. The whole point of book reviews is to help evaluate whether you want to get a book or not. They also make a profit from republishing snippets, but it's certainly not infringing. Authors don't see a penny of that unless it encourages someone to go out and buy the book.
What Google is doing is providing customized excerpts based on what you're looking for. In all probability it will increase sales for books that it indexes-- there are plenty of times that I haven't bought a book online because I couldn't tell if it included what I wanted. Then I check it out in person at a bookstore if it's available. If it's not, then I just don't buy it.
And as a side note, bookstores already provide a service that allows you to do what people are afraid Google will enable, and possibly for less effort. If you're a reasonably quick reader it's not hard to read an entire book (or at least as much as you want) in a single bookstore visit. There are plenty of books that I've read in the bookstore that I didn't buy.
Making full copies may be irrelevant- libraries routinely make full copies of damaged books that are out of print in order to preserve their content.
Copyright wasn't intended to give authors absolute control over the ability to profit from their content. It strikes a balance (at least it used to) between protecting authors' ability to profit and the benefit to society of having things made publicly available.
I'll spell this out even more clearly. I have written book X recently...[lots of stuff cut out for space]... And there's certain no law that compels me to accept free advertising in recompense for abuse of my copyright.
Ok, so suppose your Book X is on the shelf at the library and I decide to read it there and write a review of it. I pull out a couple of excerpts and include them in the review. I sell this review to some book of reviews, who then publish it with ads. They and I have both profited from your book, and you don't see a penny (except from the single sale to the library). That's free advertising for your book, and there's nothing you can say or do about it- it falls under fair use. I can even say your book sucks in the review, and it's still fair use.
In fact, I just did something like that in this post-- if you read "The Fine Print" at the top of all the replies, all your comments belong to you. I just excerpted your copyrighted material (I could even have fairly included the whole thing, but it would have been annoying for other readers) to write a negative review of it, and Slashdot profits from it.
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Informative)
So let me spell this out clearly: Google hold copies of original works. They use these entire copies to serve up snippets to individual users. By serving up snippets they are able to make sales of advertising. Therefore Google are using entire copies of copyrighted material for commercial benefit. This is so far from fair use it's not debatable. So Google are clearly in breach of copyright even though the end users aren't. I can't spell it out more simply than that.
The courts, thus far, have disagreed with you. In precedent setting cases it was ruled that the republishing, not the copying is the part restricted to excerpts. The courts have ruled that it is legal to copy entire works for the purpose of providing excerpts in a case where those excerpts were generating revenue via ads. Basically the case was about a system just like Google images where entire images were copied and made into thumbnails, which were displayed with ads to generate revenue.
This court case was a district one, not a supreme court decision but all but one district court has filed supporting briefs. Guess which district they chose to file against Google in? If they can win in the district court a supreme court appeal is almost guaranteed, and these lawyers are gambling that they can delay with an injunction and tie things up in court, or that the supremes will disagree with all the lower courts (sans one).
Re:You are confusing two issues (Score:3, Informative)
>if you like.
Then you are aware wrong. I will will show text from the US copyright law for you, other countries have similar text:
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; "
Nowere does it say that it is allowed as long as you don't distribute the copies. Actually, distribution would be ANOTHER, different copyright infringement, not tied to the one above, lets quote further from the same section:
"(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; "
In case you want to read it yourself, here is a link:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/u
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for web indexing, that's debatable. I think you'd probably have the law on your side if you tried suing Google for violating the copyright on your web pages, and the fact that you don't explicitly opt out of their indexing with a robots.txt shouldn't make a bit of difference.
Note that I'm not a lawyer, and the lawyers you'd have to hire to make this case would almost certainly cost you more than the damages you'd get from Google if you won it.
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that if a content provider of a web page doesn't want their pages cached either by my machine, my proxy or even Google that they should employ a robots.txt file AND password protect the site to keep Google out. Otherwise the Internet is basically no different than putting stacks of fliers (web pages) everywhere and being upset if someone takes (types in a URL) more than one (caching) to give to their friends (serving cached pages).
Re:Melinda Gates on Board of Directors (Score:2, Flamebait)
Go back and try again...maybe you could say something like: "I am not surprised at this coming from the conservative Washington Times" ... except the authors are Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr - left and right.
Your reflexive defense of ./'s favorite search engine company would be pathetic if we weren't all aware of the Slashbot effect.
Re:Melinda Gates on Board of Directors (Score:2, Interesting)
Excuse me Mr. Dumbass, this op-ed piece is in the Washington Times, not the Post.
A board of directors at a newspaper generally has very little to do with editorial content.
This is not the opinion of the newspaper, but an op-ed piece, representing the opinions of the article's authors.
Conspiracy theories aside, the Washington Times is a pretty substandard paper -- they print more 'news' stories than any legit paper I've ever seen that are based on single, anonymous sources -- stories which are transparent plants that fall apart days (or less) after publication. This is the paper that 'broke' the story that all of Iraq's secret weapons were smuggled out of the country by the Russians after the US invasion. Its sole source for that one (IIRC) was an 'anonymous White House official' -- perhaps the one who was just indicted.
Besides that, the Wash Times is an organ of the Moonies [realjournalism.net]. [Note: the information on the preceeding link is mostly correct, except they describe the Times as a 'highly respected newspaper'. It isn't.]
Re:Google free ride is coming to an end (Score:4, Interesting)
they index the content of websites/books and provide it for a cost; a side advertisement that is related. They are not claiming to do it for mankind, even though it is a clear benefit.
Within a few years (if it has not happened already) Google's advertising revenue will dwarf all domestic newspaper ad revenues.
And your point is?????? News media over the last 5 years have become lapdogs and no longer do their jobs (report esp on politicians). So instead, BLOGGERS have really been replacing newspaper as a major source of info, not google. Google is actually helping newspaper via news.google.com.
Is this unchecked growth a good thing?And why is it not? If you can do it better, than do so. Google shows innovative capitalism at its best. They not only have done innovative work, but have continued to do so. They do not have a monopoly, but even they do, it is natural (as opposed to MS's which was/is an illegally aquired and maintained).
Re:Indexing or Caching? (Score:2)
I can understanding not wanting someone to steal a complete copy of your book, but not allowing the contents of your book to be searchable goes against the spirit (if not the letter) of copyright law. The whole point of copyright is to promote public benefit. What is more beneficial - a library whose contents you know nothing of without reading it all yourself or judging by the title - or an indexed and searchable repository of knowledge?
This isn't to say what Google is doing is right in its entirety, but I've yet to hear a compelling argument that says the idea of it is wrong. Remember: intellectual "property", in this case, copyright, was not conferred upon creators just to make them rich. It was also to promote the growth of ideas for the public good. If a searchable library of all our information is not in the public's best interest, then I don't know what is.
Summary: Google may well be breaking the letter of the law, but they're following the spirit of the law more closely than almost any before it. Google may well be implementing things incorrectly, but the general concept; a searchable library, is absolutely wonderful.
Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:2)
That said, [to the article author] get a grip. You don't have to use google to "use the web". Other search engines still exist.
Tom
Re:Wait (Score:2)
Or even just five years, yes I am picky.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Run for the hills! (Score:2)
Ah. and sadly, that explains goatse.
Don't make jokes (Score:5, Funny)
So, now how do I get paid for writing this post? I don't? All right, that's it! ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
To the rag that is the Wash. Times: Let them scan! (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The Washington Times != The Washington Post. One is a bastion of DC journalism. The other is only slightly better than a tabloid.
2. Let Google scan. Let me search. Only by having Google's (or someone's) index available will I be able to easily find a book I never knew existed. The Dewey Decimal System's got nothing on full text indexing.
Re:To the rag that is the Wash. Times: Let them sc (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, I wouldn't even say the Washington Times is that good even.
It was founded by the Moonies, which is IMHO, a cult and certainly not an uncontroversial organization by any other standards.
Add to that the fact that it was explicitly created by Moon to create an 'alternative' to the Post that was more in line with his own opinions. Which is just a wonderful premise to start a quality newspaper on. Not.
(Not that there's anything wrong with op-eds. But if it's the raison d'etre of your paper, I wouldn't call it a 'newspaper'.)
Ok, but enough shooting the messenger.. The actual op-ed piece speaks for itself. It's a load of baloney. Filled with a nonsense interpretation of copyright law, tons of statements and allegations without any arguments or reasoning to back them up.
And more than a few straw-men like: "Our laws say if you wish to copy someone's work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that."
Google wants to abolish copyright laws. Riiight. (sarcasm)
Re:To the rag that is the Wash. Times: Let them sc (Score:2)
It was founded by the Moonies, which is IMHO, a cult and certainly not an uncontroversial organization by any other standards.
Let's not forget that "Rev." Moon recently had himself crowned the prince of peace in an elobarate self-congratulatory ceremony. Someone who does that is probably not out to establish an objective newspaper.
The actual op-ed piece speaks for itself. It's a load of baloney. Filled with a nonsense interpretation of copyright law, tons of statements and allegations without any arguments or reasoning to back them up.
So basically, the Washington Times is a lot like slashdot...
Re:To the rag that is the Wash. Times: Let them sc (Score:3, Informative)
Tabloid is a term of size, or physical format. It has nothing to do with content. Not having seen the paper in question, I can't say which it is, but, for instance, The New York Times is a broadsheet, and The New York Post is a tabloid.
Libraries and Print media here to stay.. (Score:2)
Re:Libraries and Print media here to stay.. (Score:2)
Gentlemen, Start Your Hypocrisy Detectors.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who wants to start posting Barr and Schroeder's voting records?
Or does their objection to doing it "unilaterally" merely mean "our old colleages aren't getting their cut"?
Voting Records / Philosophy (Score:2, Informative)
Bob Barr: very conservative Republican
Voting Record on Issues 2000 [issues2000.org]
Pat Schroeder: Democrat; pro-copyright, but also pro-access to information
http://www.iastate.edu/~cccatt/p%20schroeder.html [slashdot.org]
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:Gentlemen, Start Your Hypocrisy Detectors.... (Score:2)
"One library buys one of their journals. They give it to other libraries. They'll give it to others."
Voice vote. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Voice vote. (Score:3, Informative)
Fundamentally Disruptive? (Score:2)
People tend to be afraid of disruption. It's natural. Google's got the pockets to deal with the repercussions, so I'm happy to let it play itself out, even if they get spanked with a billion dollar judgement against them.
Change the law (Score:2)
Re:Change the law (Score:2)
You dont need to eliminate copyright altogether to eliminate the negative properties of it altogether.
The concept of copyright should be built upon the foundation of compensating the authors, not upon restricting everyone elses rights to do what they wish with their own property or creating artificial scarcity through monopoly.
Want the government to encourage writing or other arts? Then it can damn well put its money where its mouth is and actually pay for it straight out, rather than fool around with indirect taxation through legalized monopoly rents. We're paying either way, so we might as well put the level of encouragement desired on paper.
Intellectual Property FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Intellectual Property FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
But what if the law is wrong ?. Copyright was originally supposed to be a contract between an artist and soceity, the deal is that your work will be protected for a period of time in order to encourage you to make further cultural contributions. How many of these books that google is scanning are over 30 years old ?, has the author not had enough time to profit from his work ?.
Copyright in the US (and also in the UK shamefully) is now effectively infinite. Copyright is a anti capitalist monopoly that rewards people for the work of others and puts a price on our culture. Imagine if shaespeare's plays were under copyright today.
One of the great ironies of this copyright law is that Disney, one of the main proponents of extensions, would have been unable to rip off the all those fairy tales had todays copyright laws existed a 100 years ago.
Re:Intellectual Property FUD (Score:3, Informative)
Thats kinda my point.
Seems like fair use to me. (Score:2)
It seems obvious that he sees "fair use" as something to be dismissed (as he does in the next paragraph).
I'm unclear as to why he doesn't have problem with book reviews (which often display portions of a book) or student's book reports. The courts have decided that copyright material can be presented without permission for a number of uses. While this seems completely reasonable to me, I suspect the courts get to decide this one.
EFF has an interesting analysis [eff.org] on this as well.
Re:Seems like fair use to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used: Favors Google. Google appears to be copying only as much as necessary (if you are enabling full-text searching, you need the full text), and only tiny snippets are made publicly accessible. Once again, Google looks a lot more like Arriba Soft than MP3.com.
They may only be providing snippets, but they're copying the whole damn thing.
Nothing inconsistent here (Score:2)
Rest assured they are both on the same side of the "isle", the one with a tropical island nest paid for by Thurston Howell III, er, the book publishers.
Bob Barr no doubt made plenty of friends in publishing when he recently wrote a book [townhall.com]. Book royalties are a convenient way of laundering money bound for politicians (Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton, etc.) since they are ostensibly for something the person did rather than being outright contributions.
This controversy seems no different than the one about SBC's pipes [slashdot.org], it's basically people griping that they want more money off someone else's hard work. Let's hope that the courts believe that indexing a book and putting that index online with small excerpts is fair use.
Small price (Score:2)
If publishers and authors have to spend all their time policing Google for works they have already written, it is hard to create more.
Do publishers and authors currently spend time policing libraries, making sure no one is making 10 cent copies of their work?
Anti-Competitive Behavior (Score:5, Informative)
For those who may not be aware, their objective is not to have the entire book available on the internet because it won't be or shouldn't be. They'll have enough of the book (whatever that is) to help you find the name/author/etc of the book then tell you where to find the book. (Amazon, library)
Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear there are places where there are shelves after shelves of books, conveniently organized for quick reference, all at the disposal of the public, free of charge. What's more, these places, sometimes called "libraries", will even let you photocopy any of the material you find there for only the cost of the copy machine! Just imagine how much creativity is being stifled by these rackets! If we hope to save our society from the menace of intellectual property theft, we should be shutting them down, and not allowing Google start doing the same!
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions. (Score:3, Insightful)
Checking books out from a library does not involve copyright law, as you're not making a copy of anything.
There are four factors to US Fair Use law [wikipedia.org]. The differences between Google's copying and library photocopying are:
Google's use is commercial (see the judge's argument in the my.mp3.com case [uh.edu]). Most use at a library is usually educational, but it may not be.
No difference
Google is copying 100% of the books. It's fairly well established that it's not legal to copy an entire book in your library's copier, that it's only legal to copy some subset of the pages.
No difference
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the law does allow libraries to make a copy of an entire work [copyright.gov]. Since Google is essentially acting as an agent of the participating libraries, it seems like this exception is applicable.
Re:Libraries are terrible, terrible institutions. (Score:2)
Contradictions (Score:5, Informative)
It just sounds to me that they are afraid of change. Creativity does not by definition depend on money. Why would there be thousands of art blogs, musicians, and writers who just publish it all for free. Some of them are really good, or even mainstream and could sell, but the commercial copyright industry just has no interest since they already have a few others, and profit margins would just go down when you add one more.
Evidence? (Score:2)
Retard (Score:3, Interesting)
As opposed to what lobbyists have done, rewriting copyright laws (extending them infinitely) and crushing creativity (you so much as write something similar to us and we release the lawyers)?
We can only hope, for the good of all society, that this day comes soon.
Profitability and Creative Works (Score:2, Insightful)
Creativity is more obviously crushed by the idea that you should use your creativity to make money. Some examples:
Creativity isn't quashed by making content free. The potential for making money from being creative is reduced by making content free. There are millions of people who enjoy being creative for creativity's sake and not for money-making. Look at all the bands that have supported free downloading of their MP3s etc.
Huge big budget creative projects (e.g. War of the Worlds) couldn't afford to be produced with out profiting from ticket-sales etc....but free content doesn't prevent them from doing so -- it just reduces their potential profit (from DVD sales etc.).
So maybe, if the potential for profit from creative-works were reduced (e.g. by making content more free), then the Big Companies would butt-out a little bit and let people be creative for creativity's sake!
You can take the politician out of politics...... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was going to argue against it stifling creativity, but I guess paranoia would keep you from writing new works as it's hard to type while running from imaginary enemies.
The article claims Google has not defined what a "snippet" is. They go on to ask if it's a paragraph, a page or even a chapter..... This is willful ignorance as Google has provided examples of what a snippet will look like. Best to ignore what's out there so we can create the monster to look the way we want it to.....
Re-Ining? (Score:2)
Who Gets to Decide? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the better point of the article: who said that Google gets to decide what's fair use? It can't just be Google's say so, court decisions aside. Nor just the balance of opinion on the web.
I admire Google's robust approach to copyright - that it's better to try things first, find out if you're right second. It's a very cool company. But it's not elected and it is straying into the area of other people's copyrights... be it for good reason, or otherwise.
This is the more unsettling point in the article. In the same vein: why do Schroeder and Barr get to decide what is fair use? To point out the problem, reasonably, is something the article does very well until right near the end. These last few paragraphs stray unsettlingly into RIAA languge, be it intentionally or otherwise.
Good from libraries outweighs harm to producers (Score:2)
This debate happened a long time ago. The benefits to society from an educated populace with easy access to information vastly outweighs any harm that might come from shared access to the information to the producers.
I'm suprised more of the public does not push for this; indeed, a digital library would be a great boon in many ways. Printed media is not going anywhere, and when people are given a reasonable choice, they will pay for a service to save effort infringing someone's copyright. See, iTunes et al.
Go google!
Re:Good from libraries outweighs harm to producers (Score:2)
Fair Use Misleading. (Score:4, Interesting)
Where google may have issues, is if anyone figures out a way to reconstruct a book in total. They would give people like this a lot of ammunition against them. Of course, the library does not prevent me from scanning a book if I take it home, but that is something that will be missed in the hype around it. I am not sure how they could prevent this, but these are some pretty smart guys.
In this case, the authors sound more like they want a cut of the click through, regardless of sales. What may be interesting in the end is book sellers would be the most likely to advertise on Google Print. A "click here to buy this book" type of link.
Re:Fair Use Misleading. (Score:3, Informative)
However, if google lives up to the claim they will only provide snippets
Rather than guessing about what they'll do, go check out the Google Print [google.com] beta site and see how it works. They also have a FAQ list [google.com] that describes it pretty well.
To summarize, though:
wow it hurts doesn't it (Score:3, Insightful)
It sucks when another company comes along and try and change the rules. It's ok when you do it though huh?
Let's see as I understand it. You look for certain phrases through searching books scanned in on google. It finds those books and displays a page or so of the text (probably less). So you know what you searching for is actually found. Then you can if you want, now see if you can keep up, buy the book.
Wow the authors and publishers really loose out. I see what they mean. Why would you want to sell more books? Google must be stopped!
Didn't amazon do something like this already? Well at least a few pages of the book.
How would authors make money? (Score:2)
If i'm going to spend a couple of years writing a book in the hopes that it makes money, I'd hope people that read it pay for it.
-HockeyPuck
I'm more confused than ever (Score:3, Insightful)
If I write the same novel and leave it on a public file server, if someone picks it up and reads it or saves it to disk they have made a copy of it (because thats how digital reading works) so they have violated copyright, unless I allow them the right to make one copy. So what happens the next time I open the file? Technically I'll have a copy on disk and a copy in memory - so I'll have two copies. Or worse, I decide I want to read it on a different computer, I copy it to the other computer, delete from the current computer and then read it on the other computer. As far as I'm concerned there is still only one copy, but in reality there are three: the copy marked for deletion on my harddrive, the copy on the other computers harddrive and the copy in memory. All this before we start getting our knickers in a twist about caching and registers!
Digital data really stuggles with copyright, because even the most simple of actions require that the data be duplicated, and the reason we duplicate over transfer is because it's faster and safer. Once something is digitized good luck trying to keep control over its distribution.
Googles actions here show a complete disregard for conventional copoyright. Taking a none digital medium and transcoding it to digital, then disitributing it on the web is not what fair use had in mind, and really should involve giving some money to the copyright holders, probably a lot of money.
Re:I'm more confused than ever (Score:2, Informative)
That's it. "Copying" is not illegal. Never has been. You can take a book of your shelf, rip it apart, create 5000 copies. All perfectly legal as long as you don't give/sell those copies.
Re:I'm more confused than ever (Score:5, Informative)
It is really quite simple. You are allowed to copy copyrighted works all you want. What is illegal is either selling or giving those copies to someone else. There is a "fair use" exception that lets you use short snippets for review purposes.
That sounds very nice, but it's not true, at least in the US. According to section 106 of title 17 of the US Code:
Per the bolded bits, only the copyright owner has the legal right to make copies. Now, there are a whole bunch of exceptions to that, including Fair Use (section 107), reproduction by libraries (section 108), and a bunch of others.
You can take a book of your shelf, rip it apart, create 5000 copies. All perfectly legal as long as you don't give/sell those copies.
No, I'm pretty sure it is illegal for you to make those copies. Of course, if you don't give them away or sell them the publisher (a) won't have any reason to sue you for it and (b) wouldn't be able to get anything from you if they did sue you, because you made no profit. Historically, copyright infringement has been a civil issue, and although your copies infringe the copyrights, there is no loss over which the copyright holder can sue.
As of a few years ago, copyright infringement became a criminal offense, and the 5000 copies you mention would seem to meet the requirements for the criminal statute (section 506). Again, though, if you didn't do anything with the copies other than store them in your basement, there's no way for the authorities to find out you've broken the law, and really no reason for them to bother even if they do find out.
Are you sure it is that simple? (Score:3, Informative)
For starters, the way the law is written, copying appears to be protected privalege granted to the owner of the copyright. From Section 106 [copyright.gov] of the Copyright Act of 1976:
Note that the original Copyright Act of 1790, did not mention reproduction but rather just "publishing, printing, and vending."
Furthermore, all the articles that I've read that were actually written by lawyers familiar with copyright law, give me the impression that copying for personal, non-comercial use is legal only by way of various precidents, and not by statue. Furthermore, the exact boundries of personal-comercial use are still in flux. This view was held both by people who were in favor of increasing copyright protections, and by those who were in favor of increasing fair use. There was also a great deal of debate among lawyers over whether space-shifting (copying and coverting between formats for personal use) would be concidered fair-use, as no court cases had set a precident yet.
If copying was not restricted at all, then they would not be talking in this way. It would be clear that as long as it was not distributing then it was fine.
If you have any legal sources that back up the idea that copying is not illegal I would love to hear about them, but from everything I have seen, copying is illegal by default, but he most common cases have been ruled fair use, and others are simply overlooked.
If they're right, Google is building my dream (Score:2)
Our laws say if you wish to copy someone's work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that.
That's what I want to trash,too.
Google envisions a world in which all content is free
That's exactly the world in which I want to live.
These lawsuits are needed to halt theft of intellectual property. To see it any other way is intellectually dishonest.
I believe in freedom of access and distribution of all information content for all mankind. These lawsuits are theft of intellectual works that belongs to all mankind, and they belong to all mankind for the simple fact of being intellectual works.
NaNoWriMo Creativity (Score:2)
As a NaNoWriMo participant [nanowrimo.org], I had wondered where my creativity had gone last night. Damn you, Google! Now I'll never make it beyond 50,000 words.
What the f*** is wrong with these people? (Score:3, Insightful)
If we'd had a "Napster of books" that blew the doors off of print like it did for music, publishers would be beyond this now. I know the RIAA/MPAA take the stance that P2P has had a negative effect on the music/movies biz, but with the massive success of the iPod/iTMS/[insert favorite online music store] does anyone really beleive that anymore?
The Law (Score:2)
No they're not. They're testing the law in a whole new field of endeavour. The courts will decide what the law is, and clearly neither side can claim a cut and dried legal watertight case till the court rules. Neither side can claim the other is "changing the law". The field is too new. Personally, I hope Google wins. We shall see.
Pat Schroeder is a paid shill (Score:5, Informative)
Claiming that Pat Schroeder still holds true to any of her former progressive Democratic views is like saying Arianna Huffington [thedetroitproject.com] is still a Republican.
preserving the heritage trumps copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument that these people use is ONLY about copyright and how they THINK they might be worse off in this deal. Their reasoning is not at all why this is a good thing for the society and they do not even consider how it will benefit themselves.
It is a well known but little understood fact that people who go to libraries are the ones most likely to buy books. It is as little understood that file sharers are the ones most likely to buy records.. You do not need to stretch your imagination to understand that when books are known courtesy of this program, that people will be interested in copies these often out of print books.
Please wake up, you are robbing yourself when you spout this nonsence.
Thanks,
GerardM
Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr? (Score:3, Interesting)
Two wastes of horseflesh, they are.
google's indexing (Score:2)
Sometimes the search system is so clunky that it is nearly unuseable, that happened to me in college while doing research papers. I had to have the help of a librarian many times to find usefull results. I learned a lot about boolean back then.
Oh, fuck off everyone (Score:2, Troll)
Books or congressmen NOT FOR RESALE (Score:2)
I guess the warranty on congressmen lasts as long as copyright does*.
* See List of countries' copyright length - USA [wikipedia.org]
behind all the rhetoric (Score:2)
No, what they are afraid of is that with an opt-out policy, Google will pick up lots of content that they don't control and that provides cheap or free alternatives to what they sell at inflated prices. They rightfully fear for the businesses they represent, they just fear for it not because of copyright violations, but because of all the competition that actually exists but that is still hard to find at this point.
The kind of transparent rhetoric that these Washington has-beens are using, like referring to Google's search index as a "free online library" and to Google's quite defensible fair use arguments as a "license to steal", is almost amusing at this point. That kind of talk only reveals that much more clearly how political and out of touch these people are. Fortunately, their efforts are ultimately for nothing: CNN and big publishing houses will hit their trees, too, no matter what rhetorical or political stunts their hired help tries to pull.
R.I.P. Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we need it? I learned in business never to write or say anything proprietary that you don't want others to know.
Copyright is basically using the force of government to enact a monopoly on thought. I'm not sure the process of thought should be regulated or licensed.
The web's easy access to millions of commercial (ie, for profit) copyright works "for free" proves why copyright is outdated: people still buy content they could download freely.
Why do people buy versus download?
1. They appreciate the author's work and want to compensate them.
2. They want to support the author's future work.
3. The time-requirements or download quality is wors than buying the author's version.
4. They're afraid of government force.
I doubt the last is a big reason.
I'm 31. I buy content as its time-cheaper than downloading. For the youth, the reverse is true. The major pirates can't vote, can't sign a contract and can't get credit. 6 years of "piracy" can set up their preferences for 50 years of purchasing.
I say use the web to set up your future customers. Dump copyright.
I don't think... (Score:2)
Re:Is it me... (Score:2)
But if you look closely at where much of the writing is coming from, you will see that much of it starts from companies that are very MS friendly. IOW, this is a FUD attack on Google no different than what MS does to the linux world.
Google really does need to make sure to defend themselves against these.
Re:Google, Books and the internet.. (Score:2)
If Google is convinced this is in the best interests of authors, they should provide them with an opt-in. This could be good or bad for books in different sectors.
Even better, the search engines and publishing houses should get together and decide on some standard metadata format (akin to robots.txt) by which the copyright owners determine whether, and how much, their book can be indexed. Google today - who knows tomorrow? Does Google think it is fair that authors have to individually contact each company that does this, to request their book is excluded?
Is it OK if I stick a notice up in the town hall saying I am going to burgle everyone in town, but people who contact me will be excluded?
Re:Google, Books and the internet.. (Score:4, Informative)
It is WE who like our sites scanned, and if not, we add a Robots.txt file.
I'd just like to mention, adding a robots.txt is an opt out scheme. Google indexes all the internet that people don't specifically request they do not. Legally, they do not even have to respect the robots.txt, they do so to generate good will. It would be prohibitively expensive to contact every website operator and get permission in advance.
The same holds true for books as well. It is just too expensive to ask every copyright holder, and many copyright holders are completely obscured. Authors die, publishing houses go out of business. Technically, someone owns the copy rights, but no one really knows who.
All (most) books say have on them, in print, right in the beginning a text saying "copying of material from this book is not allowed unless permitted, prior, in writing, by the author or the publisher".
Which means jack and shit since it is not formatted in such a way as to be machine readable, like the robots.txt and since it is not legally binding. Fair use means Google can index them in order to recreate a excerpt and children can copy a paragraph for their book report. They could but in a clause that says "you agree to pay me $1 for every letter in this book you read." It means nothing.
And authors have little ability to "check the web logs" and see who scans their books.
Neither do web users since it is easy to forge said information.
Fair use dictates that google links to our sites directly.
What the hell are you taking about? The fair use doctrine says no such thing.
Not only that, but internet has shaped to be mostly a free and open medium. Books - not. Books, you have to buy, or at least subscribe to a library (paid, directly or indirectly). Different "market".
The internet is not free. A good chunk is free, and a good chunk is paid for by ads, but then pay-to-view porn sites make up about a third as well. All three of these models apply to print as well.
Basically, from doing a little research it is pretty apparent Google is likely to prevail in this case. As for whether or not that is a bad thing, the only people who have so far objected are people who make their living marketing and distributing books, because they are afraid that their position is in jeopardy. They are right, their positions are in jeopardy. That does not mean print.google.com is not a wonderful thing for authors, readers, researchers, and mankind as a whole. I'm quite happy if Google indexes books I've written, it is free advertising. As an avid reader I'm happy to be able to easily find books relating to keywords if I am doing research of looking for a reference. I can't imagine that I or very many other people will search for some term, find a book, and use that excerpt of knowledge instead of buying a book, if they would otherwise have bought the book for that purpose. If the excerpt you need is that small you can just write it down at the library of book store and you have no business buying the whole book in the first place. Google print is a double win for authors and consumers and a minor blow to middle men. That is jsut fine, Copyright is supposed to be about encouraging authors and benefitting the people, not ensuring a revenue stream for distributors
Re:Save The Walking (Score:2)
Re:Dear Editors, (Score:3, Funny)
Cool, you have just made a discovery that no one else has ever done. I will start copying like crazy (as long as I don't redistribute those copies I am according to you not infringing on copyright).
Now, the question is, what does the part in most copyright laws that says COPYING is an exclusive right to the copyright holder in most cases mean?