basically what is going to happen is that an author writes a book- takes years to do so or whatever- google has soemoen take 10 minutes or so to automatically scan the work, and offer it for free online, for now, with the eventual thought of charging to read the online content- meaning hte actual author will be udnersold for his OWN work and be bankrupted after having done all that work while google becoems rich after having done hardly any work
Gee what a swell racket! Have soemoen else do all the hard work first, then swoop in and steal the work and sell it to enrich yourself at their expense-
And hte courts ruled this action legal? Theft is now legal?
I have not read the SCOTUS order or the case it may refer to, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I think the Court says a Google link to a scanned book (by a 3rd party or maybe even Google) available online does not infringe on copyright as a scanned book is not the same as the book/hardcopy as long as you don’t pay money to access the link. What the court seems to ignore is Google makes money on the number of clicks as Google inserts ads on most pages we view or get to via a click.
Meanwhile, the original author and publisher starve.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
I do not think so as one who has frequently read and sometimes quoted some of such, for Google is only providing a small portion of such works, too often simply in little text boxes, which i think is for cases in which the publisher has not given some sort of permission for the work. This is not consistent so i am only surmising that Google has some lilited permission for some books. But which text you cannot copy, unless you transcribe it or do a screen shot and use OCR software.
Moreover, there is nothing said about Google charging to read these portions, and instead they actually foster sales by pointing readers to sites where they can buy the book (by which advertising is how Google gets some money). Amazon also enables readers to read some portions of books. Thus it is perhaps like giving customers samples of a cake, and then pointing them to where they can purchase the whole thing.
And as such, like letting customers read books in a brick and mortar store, Google books or the like is more likely to advertise and sell books rather than to hinder it, especially since the books are more likely to be cited, such as by Wikipedia.
And SCOTUS has ruled before that a small portion of copyrighted works can be used for reviews etc. FR itself depends on this, and could likely win against sites which forbid any copy/paste of their articles. Therefore, unless Google books is providing very substantial portions of books without permission to do so, and charging to read them, then it can hardly be charged with doing something illegal, esp when they make it hard to copy the text.
But YouTube likely abounds with illegal posting of videos, a few of which I likely have watched ("Thief in the night," etc), though i do want to be legal. Yet i suspect some authors implicitly sanction it as it is also likely to increase sales. It is the downloading of such that Google states it does does not sanction or enable, and takes down vids when notified of CR violations.