Google digitizing all books

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Kevin M Bray wrote:

> I've used up more than my share of opinion space on this topic, so just 
> one more quick question:
> 
> Quoting "Paul B. Gallagher":
> 
>> [...] what Google is actually
>> proposing to do, publishing entire works, is not fair use, not even
>> close. Obviously, certain works (those in the public domain, public
>> records such as laws, etc.) are excluded from the restriction, but if I
>> write a new symphony, Google has no right to take and publish it
>> without my permission, and I will not grant that permission without
>> fair compensation.
> 
> Can someone please refer me to the specific place where Google makes  
> this proposition, or alternatively, where Google actually republishes  
> an entire copyrighted work?

Here are a few relevant citations that I could find quickly. It will 
take more time to find something as extreme as I alleged.

<http://books.google.com/googlebooks/issue.html>
... Yet some of these same publishers have filed suit to stop our 
Library Project. In that project, we're partnering with libraries to 
scan both public domain and in-copyright books. We carefully protect 
copyright holders by making sure that when users find a book under 
copyright, they see only a card catalog-style entry providing basic 
information about the book and no more than two or three sentences of 
text surrounding the search term to help them determine whether they've 
found what they're looking for.

So why has such a universally useful tool become so controversial? 
Because some in the publishing community question whether any third 
party should be able to copy and index copyrighted works so that users 
can search through them, even if all a user sees is the bibliographic 
information and a few snippets of text, and even if the result is to 
make those books widely discoverable online and help the authors and 
publishers sell more of them. ...

[end quote]

If this is true, then the following should not be possible: I searched 
Google books for
	"Stranger in a Strange Land"
and the first hit was:
<http://books.google.com/books?id=oq1e_CGV77cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22stranger+in+a+strange+land%22#PPA28,M1>
I readily viewed perfectly legible images of the first 45 pages before I 
got the notice, "some pages are omitted from this book preview." The 
book has a total of 438 pages, so this is just a little over 10% of it.

However, I would note that on the right side of the screen we see the 
notation, "Published by Ace Books. Pages displayed by permission." I'm 
not privy to the details of their private agreement, but surely 45 full 
pages goes beyond "fair use," not to mention "a few snippets." When I 
clicked the word "Copyright" just under the notice, I was shown an image 
of the page from the book containing the copyright information:
<http://books.google.com/books?id=oq1e_CGV77cC&printsec=copyright&dq=%22stranger+in+a+strange+land%22>


And here's google's side of the story:
<http://books.google.com/googlebooks/issue.html>
<http://books.google.com/googlebooks/facts.html>
<http://books.google.com/googlebooks/legal.html>

Google Book Search Settlement Agreement:
<http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/>

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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