Re: Authors Guild's Paul Aiken Opposes 'Turning Copyright Law Upside Down' -- Except When the Guild Is Helping Publishers Impose a 'License By Default'

On 9/22/05, Irvin Muchnick <irvmuch[_at_]yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Authors Guild's Paul Aiken Opposes 'Turning Copyright Law
> Upside Down' -- Except When the Guild Is Helping Publishers
> Impose a 'License By Default'
>
> http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/09/authors-guilds-paul-aiken-opposes.html

I do not agree with your position that Paul Aiken is dead right. It is far from clear-cut that what Google is doing or is going to do is an act of copyright infringement.

Google offers the authors to withdraw their works from Google's search not because it is required for Google to do that but because Google only wants to appease the authors.

There are two reasons why I think that Google is not committing any copyright infringement. First reason is that all Google does is to create index to books. Index is a separate work and therefore, Google does not need to ask authors for permission to create index to their works.

Second reason is that Google tries to expand the scope of fair use where Authors Guild tries to contract it. Although Google will copy the entire books for the purpose of building indexes, Google will not show any large portions of the books for users to read and copy. In this case, Google does not need permission from authors for the purpose of fair use.

In a way, Authors Guild strikes me as a Luddite that fears what the new digital technology including searching techniques will do to their works. We will see how the battle will unfold in the coming years.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,845

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Tue Sep 27 2005 - 00:55:01 GMT