Google Book Scanning and Copyright

Kelly v. Arriba Soft  is the decision in which the 9th Circuit Court ruled that a search engine did not violate copyright by displaying thumbnail images of photos from a photographer's Web site.  The decision included that Google did not profit from displaying the thumbnail image. But with Adsense® and other pay for click methods used to profit from search that may change since they now do.

 

Google Scanning books in a LIBRARY that then is searchable is like having a thousand thumbnails of a book. By extension of the above rule that is permissible. Google caches my thousands of photos that I have and does not directly profit from them - indirectly it does. Course Google caching my images does profit me since people can see the images and purchase them from me.

 

The book publishers are upset since an outside company is "doing to them" what they have been "doing to others" for years - taking advantage of market conditions to profit from other people's work.

 

These same companies have NEVER offered to provide a searchable non-printable non-savable copy of the books for people to find snippets of info - or even to find the book. Someone else comes along and does it and they cry "foul!" and demand that this new firm not be allowed to do it - yet they offer no alternative.

 

e-books don't count - they are functionally useless and is just an attempt to get people to buy and then repeatedly lose the same book over and over again.

 

The opt-out bit that Google says that the publishers must tell them no index their books I find to be poetic justice. This is no different than all the "consumer" protection that US Congress and other nations have stated: Each user must "opt-out" of getting something. Google is just following the US Congressional precedents of law that forces consumers to opt-out - and companies are legal entities like a person so this method should apply to them too! And when it does they THEN complain. But if they make a business rule that consumers must opt-out they see no problem.

 

What is good for the Goose is good for the gander.