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

Joseph Pietro Riolo wrote:

>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.
>
>

If that were the case, then I would agree with you. But Google is also creating digital page images, and is returning a copy of those page images to the libraries -- or at least to the Michigan library, whose license agreement with Google (which you can view at http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/um-google-cooperative-agreement.pdf) reads:

 "2.5 U of M Digital Copy. Google agrees to provide to U of M a copy of all Digitized Selected Content that has been "Successfully Processed" with thirty (30) days after the Selected Content is Digitized... the U of M Digital Copy will consist of a set of image and OCR files and associated information indicating at a minimum (1) bibliographic information... (2) which image files correspond to that Digitized work, and (3) the logical order of those image files."

So Google is giving to the library a digital copy that is not just an index -- it is a full copy of the original. Were Google discarding this copy rather than making a copy for the library, then the "it's only an index" argument might hold. As it stands, it doesn't.

>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.
>
>

I thought that copyright had to do with copying, not with letting people see those copies. The fact is that Google has made and is retaining a copy. If I take a book to Kinko's and copy the whole thing, I don't believe that a copyright infringement determination depends on whether I am showing my copy to others.

I would love to see a determination that the creation of indexes by machine is no more a copyright violation than some sitting down with lots of pieces of paper and making a list of the page numbers where each word appears, even though the former creates a transitory "copy" of the entire work. And I would also like for folks like Google -- or libraries -- to be able to show the indexed words "in context" (which Google is calling "a snippet"), although this is a bit more problematic because it implies that they have retained a copy of the work that is at least linguistically equivalent to the substance of the work. I'm not sure that I feel ok, however, with a search engine retaining a photographic copy of each page, much less with making a copy of that file for someone else. This is where I think Google crosses the line and puts an otherwise worthy project in jeopardy.

kc

-- 
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
------------------------------------