Google wins book scan battle. Again. Can post pages online. Again

But it's...

... the 'legal niceties' that can bite you.

If i read this, on the surface it seems that if I borrow a book from the library, take it home, scan it and digitise it, I'm not breaking the law so long as I put up a 'searchable page linking to places where people can buy the book'.

OK. I know. This was about Google doing it. But how far is it from the to someone using the same decision to justify a smaller operation doing the same? And then a smaller one? And then a smaller, until it's the individual?

Plus, it's arguable if this would help sell more books. People likely to buy a book are, in my limited experience, more likely to start at Amazon than do a Google-driven search. Not everyone, for sure, but no small number I'd suggest.

Alright. Yes. Or the Apple store if they're so inclined.

Of course, I'm probably wrong. After all, I'm an Idiot...

"Lawyers have a habit of biting onto the minutiae of legal niceties and missing the bigger business picture."

Especially in the publishing world it seems. One organisation has been reported putting the bite on the reading of books to groups of children in libraries. Anybody would think that children who have been read to aren't likely to spend the rest of their lives as the publishers' market.

Publishers like Newpapers are so far behind the curve.

Unfortunately publishers failed to invest in moving into the digital market, while Google spent millions on digital R and D.

They basically forfieted the digital marketplace.

This is sad as having one entity controlling most of digitized knowledge for profit is not the same as free libraries, bookstores, and schools that seek to collect and preserve diverse points of view.

Re: US only?

This would be a ruling which applies in the US only. If you make much use of Google for out-of-print books you will find there's sometimes a difference between what you can see in the US vs what you can see in the UK. In the US the PDF might be downloadable but the UK only gets a snippet view. Presumably there's a difference in what's considered to be in the public domain between the countries but it's difficult for the user to understand what the criteria are. However proxies are one solution to that. Another is archive.org. One considerable annoyance is that books which have been available in PDF are sometimes withdrawn as someone reprints it.

Re: Shockingly bad scans

" If people want to buy them, they will look me up and go buy them."

You are assuming people know about the books you write. Google Books is very good for finding books one has never heard of that contain passages relevant to a search's criteria.

Re: Shockingly bad scans

> I can't think of how I (as a published writer) will benefit from Google doing this to my books.

I fear that such an inability is hardly something a published writer should be admitting to.

Re: I hope they've carefully scanned every page...

Publishers can put whatever they wish. They can't trump fair use, much as they have frequently failed to prevent resale through attempts to gut first sale doctrine via similar legal claims.

Re: Another Viewpoint

That's a tough one.. As long as Google does the copying/digitising just for internal reference, as in : being able to provide those searchable snippets, then it may still be "fair use". Even if it's done on an "industrial" scale, the originals do not come in digitised format, and have to be processed to be used that way. At Google's own cost.

In a sense they're doing nothing else than "reading" the books, putting a classification system on it, and provide excerpts to those interested. Similar to how libraries use the Dewey Decimal system, with Uni libraries often offering the title + abstract in some format free of charge to see whether or not a certain book/article is indeed what you're looking for. It's simply that digitised books allow a wider range of offering abstracts/quotes/partial reproductions.

If they go as far as publishing the works in their database in whole, either as-is, OCR'ed or edited, then they'd need to make a deal with any right holders, obviously, but not before.

The court case in question clearly found that the way Google is going about things currently is within limits, although they're skirting the edge there. They may actually move on to actually publishing, either directly or through a subsidiary. There's a market in "legacy" titles, and quite a lot of books are only available as Antiques and damned. hard. to. find. let alone get access to, in fiction and non-fiction. Both from a viewpoint of preservation and availibility this would be a Good Thing. It's a massive undertaking, and only a giant like Google really has the resources free to pull this off. Someone needs to cough up the cash, technology and man-hours to do all this. May as well be Google. And yes, as far as I'm concerned they are welcome to a fair return on their effort on this. It's far preferable to me than datamining search habits while skirting privacy issues. At least this would class as actual "work" and "added value".

Re: Another Viewpoint

"That is a copyright violation in and of itself."

The court has said otherwise. It's their opinion that counts.

Re: Another Viewpoint

Which is exactly my original point.

If Google is offering an index service that leads to more sales for publishers or authors then all this bleating about technicalities is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot to defend your right to do so.

Other argument like "well Google is making money from doing this" is just so unbelievably sour grapes.

Re: Another Viewpoint

Ars Technica has an excellent write up about this. To summarize:

Yes Google is making an entire copy of the book.

No The copy can't be accessed by anyone. The courts reviewed the security and found it sufficient.

Yes Google shows small snippets

No the snippets are not replacements for the original work. In fact where the snippet could replace the original they won't show it. IE recipes. They also show no more than 8 snippets from a single source and they won't show snippets at all from certain pages.

Yes Google has links on the page if you want to buy the book

No they aren't showing any other ads

Finally the Ars article notes that researchers are also using this information to do research on word usage and such. Something that couldn't be performed if the entire book wasn't scanned.

Re: It takes a Google

"Fair use is real."

In the US. Elsewhere? It's a matter of debate.

For instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

"Sources differ on whether fair use is fully recognized by countries other than the United States. American University's infojustice.org published a compilation of portions of over 40 nations' laws that explicitly mention fair use or fair dealing, and asserts that some of those laws, such as Canada's, have evolved (such as through judicial precedents) to be quite close to those of the United States. However, Paul Gellar's 1999 International Copyright Law and Practice says that while some other countries recognize similar exceptions to copyright, only the United States and Israel fully recognize the concept of fair use."

Re: Ding dong. Reality calling

http://digital.vatlib.it/ You mean this one?

Preciously little "banned books" in there. Those are often in private collections, and generally unavailable to the public, or available for digitisation. Or quite well known.. After all "banned by the Church" once had the same effect on "must-have/see" as an X rating in the US...

Re: Google Steals

> this is an example of the courts always siding with the powerful at the expense of the community.

I think you'll find that they are siding with Google at the expense of big publishers.

Very few authors have any skin in this game.

"The community" would be quite happy to have much more access to literature.