"Throwing Google at the Book"

[Grendel]

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/interna ... 78,00.html

Google's new search engine of books puts a world of knowledge at our fingertips. Publishers say the Internet giant is robbing them of their rightful fees. Maybe it's time to call copyright laws history.

Interesting read.

[roid]

To those who'd like a summary of what this is all about:

A year ago or so Google announced it would be scanning in EVERY SINGLE BOOK in existance to allow them all to be text searched (via google's search technology) in what will essentially be the world's most amazing, extensive and all-encompassing library.
When they said every single book, they ment it. When Google started the project by info-raiding major university librarys; it was also scanning in previously unheard-of rare books that had fallen into obscurity and would likely have been lost forever.

As it stands currently, Google would be legally perfectly safe only allows searching of all books published prior to 1923, which is the current limit to copyright - according to copyright law all books published prior to this are now public domain. So Google's efforts in this already is a huge achievement that will guarentee that all the information in currently existing, created pre-1923 books that Google can get it's hands on will be forever historically preserved.

The problems however is that Google also wishes to make available for searches (in some form) all books, including those that are currently under copyright. Some Publishers and writers are not happy with this saying that it may cut into their profits, while other publishers and writers are happy with it saying that it will actually boost profits. It's much like the MP3 debate - some for, some against.

i especially like this interesting bit mentioned right at the end:

Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and copyright scholar, likes to tell the story of Thomas Lee and Tinie Causby, two North Carolina farmers, who in 1945 cast themselves at the center of a case that would redefine how society thought of physical property rights. The immediate cause of the Causbys' discomfort was the airplane; military aircraft would fly low over their land, terrifying their chickens, who flew to their death into the walls of the barn. As the Causbys saw it, the military aircraft were trespassing on their land. They claimed that American law held that property rights reached "an indefinite extent, upwards"; that is, they owned the land from the ground to the heavens. If the government wanted to fly planes over the Causbys' land, it needed the Causby's permission, they insisted.

The case, in time, came to the Supreme Court, where Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the Court, was not kind to the Causbys' ancient interpretation of the law. Their doctrine, he said, "has no place in the modern world. The air is a public highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass suits. Common sense revolts at the idea. To recognize such private claims to the airspace would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their control and development in the public interest, and transfer into private ownership that to which only the public has a just claim."

Google supporters say the publishers' objection rings similar to that of the Causbys'. Just as the airplane rendered the Causbys' rights to the skies incompatible with the modern world, the Web has rendered publishers' right to the digital universe out of tune with modern technology and society.

[will_kill]

Interesting read.

x100 great find Grendel..thx for posting

[Top Gun]

I thought one of the most interesting parts of the article was the discussion about books published after 1923 that have been out-of-print for years but are still under copyright. In a way, that situation is very similar to what we would call "abandonware" games. In either case, the question really boils down to whether or not the law should prohibit attempts to keep these works of media alive by freely distrubuting them, long after their original producers/publishers ceased all support for them. I think I stand with the vast majority of people here when I say that this type of activity should be legal. I'm pulling for Google here; what they've already accomplished is already amazing enough, but having excerpts from practically every English-language book ever published would be an achievment equal to the Library of Alexandria. I don't see how this case can really compare to MP3 sharing, either. In the case of Google's project, you don't get the entire book as a package, just the snippet that pertains to your search query. Even in the case of books where the entire text was accessible at once, anyone interested in keeping the whole text (i.e., someone who's not just doing research) is going to go out and buy the real thing if at all possible; you can't call reading text off of a monitor the same thing as reading an actual book. This isn't the case with downloading MP3s, which is pretty much the same experience as listening to a track on a CD. I really hope that this case goes their way.

[World War Woodi]

Interesting read.

x100 great find Grendel..thx for posting

X2 nicely done Gren