[IP] more Google
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Synthesis: Law and Technology"
<synthesis.law.and.technology@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 4, 2005 9:55:59 AM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] more Google
Dave,
I have read with great interest all the arguments back and forth on
this issue and I have seen some great creativity on both sides in
justifying the various positions. It appears people have put a great
deal of thought into the law and technologies involved with this
issue as it touches us all in some way.
I do not claim to know in advance the results of any legal challenges
issued (and the arguments on both sides are quite interesting). But
at the end of the day, doesn't this all boil down to a company (and
its supporters) telling us:
"it's for your own good"
"it's not really that bad"
Funny thing about people telling me its for my own good. Ever since
my parents said it when I was 2 years old I learned to react
negatively to it. Same thing with 'its not that bad'. That usually
was followed by some vile medecine that left my tongue hopelessly
curled for hours and gave a bitter after taste to everything.
Telling us we are better off and saying the violations are that much
of a violation seems to be imbued with great hubris. And doomed to
fail. I dont think anyone ever got away with 'its for your own good'
long-term or even medium term. Sooner that later people wake up and
say 'waitasec here!'
It saddens me because I like google.
Some of my best friends work there and I respect their work immensely.
It just seems like google is becoming 'stubborn' like all the rest of
the successful companies. Too bad :(
Google: give us back our choice. Even if it's just for show. Even
if only one person makes use of it. That is the way to do it.
Dan Steinberg
SYNTHESIS:Law & Technology
35, du Ravin phone: (613) 794-5356
Chelsea, Quebec
J9B 1N1
On 11/3/05, David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Nick Schulz < nschulz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: November 3, 2005 2:44:01 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: more Google
Reply-To: nschulz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Dave. I see you have a post on the Google print debate. I
recently wrote a piece for Forbes.com on this topic. Link and
article below.
Best,
Nick Schulz
Editor
TCS
http://www.forbes.com/home/infoimaging/2005/11/03/google-print-
project_cx_ns_1103googlecomment.html
Commentary
Don't Fear Google
Nick Schulz, 11.03.05, 11:00 AM ET
Google wants to scan all the books in the stacks of several of the
world's major research libraries to make these books searchable
online. But lawsuits are threatening to shut the project down. Should
they?
Called the Google Print Library Project, it has produced strong
opposition, particularly from the publishing industry and writers'
guilds. Opponents fear this effort violates their property and
copyrights and robs them of just desserts. They have some legitimate
concerns, but ultimately the project is not just in Google's (nasdaq:
GOOG - news - people ) interest, but in the interest of writers and
publishers as well--and of the rest of the world, too.
Under Google's plan, searches of scanned books will yield relevant
"snippets" from those books on Google's Web pages. Google hasn't
clearly defined what those snippets might be--hence much of the alarm
over their proposal. Theoretically, a "snippet" could be an entire
book, which would no doubt be a violation of copyright. The company
announced today that it has launched the first part of the project
using books in the public domain.
Fortunately, we have a sense of what a snippet might be, since the
online book retailer Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people )
offers snippets in its searchable "Look Inside" feature of books it
has scanned for its Web site.
Pat Schroeder, the former Congresswoman from Colorado is now the
president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and a
vigorous opponent of Google's plan. She is also an author. I went to
Amazon and searched in her book 24 Years of House Work and Still a
Mess for the word "property," and Amazon's technology found for me on
page 286 the following snippet:
"Protecting intellectual property is my main focus at AAP. Technology
has made it so easy to copy anything you create ..."
She's right about technology. However, my finding that snippet and
using it for this article is not a copyright violation. I didn't ask
Schroeder or her publisher for permission to use the quote in her
book. Indeed, there's an entire industry, book reviewing, predicated
on the ability of people to do something similar to what I've just done.
The way the current copyright law works, I can take a book out from
any library, read it and write a review of it for publication on the
Web site I edit or in the pages of Forbes.com or anywhere else. This
"fair use" of material involves no copyright violation. Readers
benefit from learning a bit about the book, authors and publishers
benefit from increased exposure.
While the details need to be hammered out, what Google hopes to do is
similar. It's not proposing making an entire copyrighted book
available for public viewing. Instead, it's enabling anyone at any
time to see the functional equivalent of a quote or passage from a
newspaper or magazine book review.
Google maintains the project is legal under so-called "fair use"
provisions. The publishers disagree. The publishers' argument seems
to be that since Google first must make a digital copy of the book in
order to scan it with its technology, that act of copying constitutes
a copyright infringement.
But here we are faced with another way in which technology forces us--
whether we'd like to or not--to revisit and refine our laws
protecting creators and innovators. When notions of "fair use" first
evolved, they did so before anyone would have had the ability or the
incentive to make a copy of every book ever published. Fair use in
this way never entered the picture.
But data storage and search technologies now make such a project a
practical possibility. So these technological developments force us
to reevaluate notions of fair use.
We already permit such uses of snippets for the development of book
reviews. Google's proposed technology is an extension of that. It
permits much wider dissemination of relevant snippets of books--in
doing so it will whet the appetite of a reading audience that is now
global in scale. Authors and publishers stand to benefit greatly.
Who knows, after hearing about it in this article for what I'm sure
is for almost all of you the first time, you might even be inclined
to buy Pat Schroeder's book.
Nick Schulz is editor of TechCentralStation.com. You can Google just
about everything he's ever written.
Want to track news by this author or about this industry? Forbes
Attache makes it easy. Click here.
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