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September 21, 2005
Looks like hard times ahead for Google:
Three authors filed suit against Google yesterday contending that the company's program to create searchable digital copies of the contents of several university libraries constituted "massive copyright infringement." [...] Google intends to make money from the project by selling advertising on its search pages, much as it does on its popular online search-engine site. [...] The suit contends that Google knew or should have known that the Copyright Act "required it to obtain authorization from the holders of the copyrights in these literary works before creating and reproducing digital copies of the works for its commercial use and for the use of others."So the matter seems to come down to the "fair use" provision versus the stipulation against digital copies. Google is certainly creating digital reproductions, but they're not offering them up for free to anyone who wants one. Is that fair use?Google has said from the beginning that its program is covered by the "fair use" provision of the copyright law, which allows limited use of protected works. In a statement issued in response to the suit, Google also said its program respected copyrights.
They issued a statement on the issue:
"Google Print directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the program. And, if they choose, authors and publishers can exclude books from the program if they don't want their material included. Copyrighted books are indexed to create an electronic card catalog and only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more."Now call me crazy, but this reminds me of the arguments people were offering in favor of Napster (although not necessarily in court). Of course, Napster actually did offer up the content for free. It strikes me that Google's claim is much more legitimate; should library catalogs be prevented from reproducing any portion of the text? Also, it would be damned near impossible for an artist to prevent his/her work from being distributed via a p2p network, where Google can actually back up their promise to take down anyone who doesn't want their book in the Print Library.
Which just sounds idiotic to me. If I'm going to publish any academic books, I'll want everyone to hear of it who has any reason to buy it whatsoever. Reproduce it all you want. What are these people thinking?
On hearing that, it occurred to me that if this is copyright infringement, being able to search for books using an interlibrary loan system and check them out from other libraries should be too, since the difference between these cases and a library just lending out a copy of a book is that neither the ILL library or Google has actually paid for a copy of the book. But that seems ridiculous in the ILL case, and of course I'm glossing over the fact that in the Google case, they've actually acquired a copy of the book, only a digital one. I actually think this highlights some flaws in the DMCA, and I hope that this case will bring this to light, assuming it makes it to trial.
And yes, Monica, I keep thinking that all the time.
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