From InternetWeek -
Google Inc. on Wednesday was sued by a major publishing association for digitizing library books without the permissions of copyright holders, the second such suit filed against the search engine giant
I didn’t even know about Google Print(Still in Beta) until I read this. So I went and checked it out. It pretty much looks and works like the google web search, except it searches for books.
I thought I would give it a run. I typed in ‘cats’. The usual list pops up including a color photo of the front cover of each book. I randomly chose a book about why cats paint. (Didn’t know they could). From there I could see a few pages. Table of contents, and a couple of other pages. From there you could search even deeper into the book. I typed in ‘color’. I was presented with about 10 links to several pages within the book. After being prompted to login with my google account, each link would show me a page, and a page or 2 forward or backward in the book. I’m not sure how far is too far with copyrighted content.
They do reference the author, the publisher, and a few links to where one could buy the book. I can only imagine that they have the permission of the publishers and authors. It is duly noted on this page:
Library books still in copyright: For books that we have scanned from a library which are still in copyright, you will only be able to view the bibliographic information and a few short sentences of text around your search term.
I seriously doubt that google wouldn’t have covered those bases before they attempted this endeavor.
I wrote an entry about a similar service called codefetch{ that allows you to search for books on programming code. These also would show a few excerpts of each authors pages. (A handy tool BTW!).
If anything you would think authors might even persue google, to plan how and what content would be shown. What a great way to advertise, and get books sold!
I’m thinking we haven’t seen the end of this topic, or copyright rules and laws.
Technorati Tags: google, google print, lawsuit, publisher, books, internet
November 25th, 2005 at 4:10 am
They don’t have support of a great many publishers and authors. I’ve heard some of the concerns from the author’s POV, and am not surprised this lawsuit was filed. I would have to agree it’s a big problem. I was thinking more along the lines of for non-fiction authors. As a world-wide clearinghouse where most every book is available page for page for free, people won’t need to buy books for research purposes. When people are writing research papers, they’re looking for bits and pieces anyway. From this standpoint, their plans will give away other’s intellectual property at no gain to the author. Google probably does have lawyers that think they’ve found a loophole. I’d suspect this lawsuit will instigate some changes in the law. Even a few years ago, who would have assumed a big company would want to copy every page of every book and provide the means to give the information away for free.
November 25th, 2005 at 9:07 am
I agree. I believe this will set some future precedents for copyright material on the internet.