Posted on 04/18/2016 3:10:27 PM PDT by dware
A Supreme Court order issued today closes the book on (or perhaps merely ends this chapter of) more than a decade of legal warfare between Google and the Authors Guild over the legality of the former’s scanning without permission of millions of copyrighted books. And the final word is: it’s fair use.
The order is just an item in a long list of other orders that appeared today, and adds nothing to the argument except the tacit approval of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals 2015 decision — itself approving an even earlier decision, that of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2013. So in a way, it’s old news.
(Excerpt) Read more at techcrunch.com ...
So I can go to a library and copy any book I want?
For books that are frequently out of print or copyright. Gobbledygook. Books go in and out of print for various reasons. An author suddenly becomes popular because of a movie based on one of his books and then old ones are reissued. Or there is some other reason, like someone famous mentions his favorite author.
It is enormously expensive to keep a book in print if it is no longer selling large quantities, but the publisher and the author still own the work while the public is reading other things. This is so basic I can’t believe it was even challenged.
Would they have ruled that way if Google didnt assist the Feds on spying on millions of Americans?
Sometimes Google searches take me to such scans. I have yet to find such a scan of a work that is still in-copyright without major excerpting. This is the kind of thing that has been deemed fair use because it is far from being a reproduction of the entire original.
I don’t see how this makes the publisher “starve.” In one case I liked what I read so much that I ordered the book from Amazon. That’s a sale that would never have happened had Google not even excerpted the book.
Someone can just make a book of a newspaper, anfd then google scans it, and thenits fair use
Are there any great writers anymore? There’s good ones to be sure, but great ones? Any Tolstoys today? Not going to be many more at this rate.
You just hit the nail on the head.
I’m not an attorney, but it is my understanding that the US signed onto an international copyright convention in the mid-80s. If that’s correct, how can the USSC modify a treaty?
If this stands, then ‘transformative’ can be incrementally redefined to mean almost anything - reprint a book on pastel paper and it’s OK.
Copyright law is very complex.
There have been some classic, very famous cases involving this area.
Now the tthere suddenly is no such thing as a copyright?
This is equal to Obama making a farce out of bankruptcy law with the General Motors crap he pulled.
Let's see.. First, Google allows for you to find results that reference the book, which you can then buy from an authorized publisher. You can not read more than a brief excerpt of the material.
But let's step beyond that. Almost all of the vast library of scanned books are written by people who have passed on. Most of the contemporary works Google has in their system are provided by publishers, not Google's scans.
The constitution authorizes patents and protections of works for A LIMITED TIME. I can find no reference from that period that implies that 'limited time' means anything close to the current LIFETIME of the author + 70 years (with possible renewals.)
So, yeah, what basically happened was an author wrote a book, the publisher stopped printing anymore, the author died, the book has been sitting on a musty shelf for going on 3 generations and then Google came through and gave the work new life by scanning it.
You are most welcome to send them a thank you card.
If you're Google, yes. If you're not, prepare for a body cavity search following your 3AM, smashed-front-door, flash-grenade-carpet-burns, K-9 assisted, tasered arrest for violating copyright laws.
Free stuff. Feel the Bern?
Not free at all unless in public domain and not copyright protected. You obviously don’t understand how Google’s book scanning works.
Google’s scanning of copyrighted books only helps to sell those books, putting customers together with writers. They don’t facilitate the ability to download material unless the copyrights have expired. As it is, I could spend the rest of my life reading great books prior to about 1928 that simply wouldn’t be available otherwise. I hesitate to admit I’m grateful to Google for allowing most of those millions of books to be available for free, and searchable. It has immeasurably aided historic research.
I can't wait to tell the Left. :)
I understand that Google is sneaky and self serving in ways you don't even contemplate.
>And hte courts ruled this action legal? Theft is now legal?
Where you been, FRiend? Under a rock? /s SS, ‘schools’, student aid, welfare, mediXYZ, section8, O’Care, etc.
So you have an agenda. That’s okay. Whether you like Google or not is irrelevant. The fact is that Google scanning does not make copyrighted books available for free. They simply make them searchable so that obscure titles can be more easily discoverable and found. This actually drives sales to copyright holders that they likely would not have otherwise had.
The supreme have their robed heads up their robed a$$es.
There is at least one company, in New York, if I remember right, which will scan any book you own for a nominal price and return it in electronic format.
The downside, it is a destructive process so the book is no longer a book.
Then there is the famous case of a book, Alms for Jihad, which was ordered recalled and all copies destroyed because muslims generally, and Saudi Arabia specifically threatened to bankrupt the authors, and cost the university they worked for hundreds of millions in legal costs.
It dealt with the financing of terrorism worldwide, and the role of oil rich sandmaggot countries that has made it possible.
It almost worked.
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