Yahoo to digitize public domain books

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More of a pot: kettle deal: ---Which, of course, is wrong. But just because the Author's Guild is doing, doesn't make it right.---

Of course, it just seems absurd to be doing the very thing you're suing against. Also note that the Authors Guild earlier tried to sue Amazon for daring to sell used books.

---I also question whether this really falls under the scope of 'fair use'.---

By that reasoning, it would be illegal to make a card catalog for a library.

A couple of good articles explaining this:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/27/authors_guild_v_goog.html
The Authors Guild believes that Google should only scan books belonging to writers that opt in (yeah, right -- and your VCR should only record shows from broadcasters that opt in, and Google should only index web-sites that opt in).

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html
Google respects copyright. The use we make of all the books we scan through 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.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/003992.php
I believe Google has a strong fair use defense here. Because a fair use defense turns on a case-by-case analysis of the facts, it is important to understand exactly what Google intends to do. In the words of Jonathan Band:

Under the Print Library Project, Google plans to scan into its search database materials from the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford Universities, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. In response to search queries, users will be able to browse the full text of public domain materials, but only a few sentences of text around the search term in books still covered by copyright. This is a critical fact that bears repeating: for books still under copyright users will be able to see only a few sentences on either side of the search term. Users will not see a few pages, as under the Publisher Program, nor the full text, as for public domain works. Indeed, a full page of the book is never seen for an in-copyright book scanned as part of the Library Project unless a publisher decides to transfer their book into their Publisher Program account, in which case it would be under the agreement between Google and the copyright holder.

Turning now to the traditional four fair use factors:
Nature of the Use: Favors Google. Although Google's use is commercial, it is highly transformative. Google is effectively scanning the books and turning them into the world's most advanced card catalog. That makes Google a whole lot more like Arriba Soft than MP3.com.

Nature of the Works: Favors Neither Side. The books will be a mix of creative and factual, comprised of published works. The works cited in the complaint include "The Fiery Trial: A Life of Lincoln" (largely factual history) and "Just Think" (described elsewhere as: "pictures, poems, words, and sayings for the reader to ponder").

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.

Effect of the Use on the Market: Favors Google. It is easy to see how Google Print can stimulate demand for books that otherwise would lay undiscovered in library stacks. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine how it could hurt the market for the books -- getting a couple sentences surrounding a search term is unlikely to serve as a replacement for the book. Copyright owners may argue that they would prefer Google and other search engines pay them for the privilege of creating a search mechanism for their books. In other words, you've hurt my "licensing market" because I could have charged you. Let's hope the court recognizes that for the circular reasoning it is.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-mediavore25sep25,0,4447438.story
If the paranoid myopia that drives such thinking penetrates too deeply into the law, search engines will eventually shut down. What's the difference, after all, between a copyrighted Web page and a copyrighted book? What if Internet entrepreneurs could sue Google for indexing their websites? What if the law required search engines to get clearance for every Web page? Even a company as large and well-funded as Google couldn't pull that off because what's on the Internet, and who owns that content, changes constantly.

As one author told me, "fear of obscurity, not digital indexing, is what keeps most authors awake at night."; Posted by: tic swayback Posted on: 10/03/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use