Comments on: Google Books – I Don’t Think I Have A Problem With All This

By: Tony

Tony — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:00:41 +0000

I haven’t followed this suit too much, but I think the “opt-out” is one of the big concerns. That essentially flips U.S. copyright law without Congressional action.

Another concern is that this gives Google a monopoly. Can other companies do the same thing, etc?

But like I said, I haven’t followed this too much. If I’m not mistaken, most commentators have come out against it, and I think the U.S. government may have filed a brief against it. So now, they are back to the drawing board to create a revised agreement.

By: Stan

Stan — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:31:04 +0000

Yes, I generally agree with you on the excerpt issue, although a caveat on this as it is not something I have looked at from either a Berne Convention perspective or China’s Copyright Law (as usual, the latter wouldn’t help us with this specific question). Anyway, Amazon has been doing this sort of thing for years. Taking a step away from the legal analysis, it is undeniably a “fair” practice.

The question about Google’s new/proposed online reading system is the real kicker. Obviously there are very clear copyright considerations here. My questions about it go more to the opt-out system and whether that is permissible since Google claims that it will not make these books available for online reading without affirmative or constructive permission from the author/publisher. Again, though, this is such a specific issue, perhaps of first instance, that any legal opinion (at least from me) would be wholly speculative.

Where’s a bona fide copyright guru when you need one?

By: Don Clarke

Don Clarke — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:13:38 +0000

Stan, you are the IP guy, not me, but my understanding is that whether there’s even a technical violation of copyright is not clear. After all, look at what Google now does for web sites (the content of which is protected by copyright). It gives you an excerpt in response to your search request. Google’s argument, which doesn’t seem silly to me, is that what it’s doing for books is no different.

I should add that I’m not clear about whether what Google does for web sites is lawful because (a) it’s not a violation of copyright, or (b) it *is* a violation but is then excused for some reason such as fair use.