Re: Authors Guild

> It is far from clear-cut that what Google is doing or
> is going to do is an act of copyright infringement.

I can see that indexing and displaying public domain books and books submitted by publishers is fine (assuming the publishers have secondary rights to the books). But I don't see how indexing and displaying an unsubmitted book without first seeking the author's permission can be okay, yet that is what they plan.

"We respect copyright, though, and don't allow our users to actually see any more than brief snippets of text from books where their search term appears, unless we receive explicit permission from the rights holder to show more." -- http://www.google.com/googleprint/author.html

In other words, Google will index a book whether its rights holder wants the book to be indexed or not, and it will display very short excerpts from the book whether its rights holder wants it to be displayed or not. Those very short excerpts might be significant to the work as a whole, as per the fair use tests for substantiality and effect on marketability, or not, but they will be shown.

Further to the tests for fair use, Google is not a non-profit. It is a mighty business, and it is indexing the books to increase its profits. If it were only interested in increasing access to books, it could give the index to the libraries instead of making people go to Google to use it.

So, Google plans for unsubmitted books looks like infringement to me. Of course, most rights holders would do well to allow their books to be indexed. But so what? Is helping to market a book a fair use defense?

All that Google had to do to make creators content was to agree to index only those copyrighted books that are submitted to it. That's all. Failing to do it has made lawsuits inevitable and made IP a combat zone once again.

• Mike Bradley www.techpubs.com