Not a Review = Rant

Plaintiff

Google should admit its mistake and only scan non-copyrighted material, or books whose publishers or authors give permission. To do any less is little more than digital piracy.

Accused

At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries.

Perspective

The lawsuit said Google knew or should have known that copyright laws required it to obtain authorization from copyright owners of literary works to create and reproduce digital copies for its own commercial use.

Perspective 2

Just as libraries don't need to pay publishers when they create a card catalog, neither should Google or other search engines be required to when they create an improved digital equivalent," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann.

Google's Story

Google's mission is to organize the world's information, but much of that information isn't yet online. Google Print aims to get it there by putting book content where you can find it most easily – right in your Google search results.

Click a book title and you'll see the page of the book that has your search terms, along with other information about the book and "Buy this Book" links to online bookstores (you can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the title’s bibliographic data and brief snippets). You can also search for more information within that specific book and find nearby libraries that have it.

The Press Release:

What’s more, many of Google Print’s chief beneficiaries will be authors whose backlist, out of print and lightly marketed new titles will be suggested to countless readers who wouldn’t have found them otherwise.

Google doesn’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries.

Sounds like a Wikipedia kind of thing to me.

The trouble is Google is not distributing this material with the intent of being commercial. While the service is akin to Amazon’s “Read a page” feature, its aim is to provide a higher forum to reading. Most people prefer to sample a new food before they buy a whole package, or to see the trailer before they go to the movie- it encourages consumers they won’t waste their time on something that disinterests them.

Here is what an excerpt would look like: http://print.google.com/googleprint/screenshots.html#excerpt

Without driving to your nearest library or bookstore (if what tickles your fancy is available), there is no way to preview most books other than Amazon or the Gutenberg Project. I would hope that efforts like Google’s would encourage more reading. You don’t waste time and money to go to the bookstore or library because you know beforehand from your search where to go, you know the best price, and you know you want it because you sampled it! If the guild is smart, they would support this instead of trying to hinder it as if entire volumes were being distributed.

I gave it a try, looking up a Piers Anthony Incarnations of Immortality novel. Apparently the limit is five pages when you look up a word that is in the book. Harper Collins gave their permission for Google to do this so I assume the whole text is available- but the effort it would take to draw up each page by page to print out for free would be monstrous. The service is easy but I wouldn’t envy anyone trying to use the search to get a free book. It would be extremely tedious if possible at all.

If anything, I would love to see this stay, there are many books that are hard to find because they are out of print. Many of the old TSR books, are out of print since Wizard took over the license. Not to mention lots of fantasy sci/fi pulp that has fallen through the cracks.

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050921182414998

In defending the lawsuit, Google is relying on the copyright principle of fair use, which allows the public to copy works without having to ask permission or pay licensing fees to copyright holders. EFF believes Google is likely to prevail on its defense. One key point in Google's favor is that Google Print is a transformative use of these books -- the company is creating a virtual card catalog to assist people in finding relevant books, rather than creating replacements for the books themselves.

So long as they can’t make it stick that Google is trying to distribute the materials, then this can’t work.