Re: [IP] .Google, library books, Usenet, and copyright
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Subject: Re: [IP] .Google, library books, Usenet, and copyright
Author: Edward Hasbrouck <edward@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 14th December 2004 7:43:41 am
Google's unauthorized for-profit electronic re-publication of "cached"
copies of Web pages has always been copyright infringement. (The
copyright holder can remove a work from the "cache", but such an "opt-out"
provision doesn't satisfy the requirements of copyright law, whihc require
explicit "opt in" licensing for anything other than "fair use".)
Google's new moves, however, greatly expand its copyright infringement:
(1) The New York Times reports that Google will sell ads which it will
display along with copies of library books. Whatever "fair use" rights a
library may have to loan out a physical copy of a book, they clearly don't
extend to licensing commercial online publication. Online publication
that generates ad revenue is clearly commercial online use, governed by
the terms of an electronic rights or subsidiary rights license, if any.
In the absence of an explicit grnat of rights by author, it's copyright
infringement -- online book bootlegging -- for Google's profit.
The "limitations" on use of this content will, according to the report, be
similar to those on Amazon.com's "Search Inside The Book" and "Google
Print" -- which are completely ineffectual, as I've discussed previously:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000054.html
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/cat_writing_and_publishing.html
(2) Since Usenet is a "store and forward" system, someone posting to
Usenet obviously gave some implict license for reproduction. (Although
what license was implicit must be considered in the context of the time
when the posting was made, which for much of the content of the archives
now held by google long precedes any widespread knowledge of publicaly
accessible or commerical archives.) But posters to Usenet can't be
presumed (either legally or ethically) to have granted Google the right to
publish their work online for profit, create derivative works from it, or
use it in latered form or without attribution.
Google now displays ads (no portion of the revenue from which is shared
with the author of the Usenet content generating the ad revenue for
google), and denies the author control over how their work will be
attributed. Google is creating a derivative work from the Usenet archive
(a collective work to which has never owned the copyright or sought a
license, and whose authors haven't been consulted -- they may be able to
opt out but aren't asked if they want to opt it), posting it online
without attribution, and gerating ad revenue.
This is copyright theft and for-profit online bootlegging by Google.
----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214
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