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.
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)
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.
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: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)
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.
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: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: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.
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: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:
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:Voice vote. (Score:3, Informative)
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: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.
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.
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.
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:Intellectual Property FUD (Score:3, Informative)
Thats kinda my point.