Judge rejects Google's attempt to create a universal library

[FLPanhandle]

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/22/technology/google_books_lawsuit/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google's vision of a universal library archiving all books ever published on Earth is once again at odds with laws protecting the authors of those books.

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a settlement deal Google hammered out with publishers over its controversial Google Books archive, saying the proposed agreement went too far in giving Google control over the digitalization of books.

"The question presented is whether the is fair, adequate, and reasonable," Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court in New York City wrote in his 48-page ruling. "I conclude that it is not."

The decision is the latest twist in a saga that is helping to shape the legal and commercial landscape around digital publishing.

Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." As part of that goal, it struck a deal in 2004 with several major libraries to digitally copy the books in their collections. The company now has an archive of more than 12 million publications.

To those who want information to be online and accessible, that's a great idea. To publishers -- and many of the authors they work with -- it's a terrifying one.



Eventually books will be like music; easily available without the need for a "distributor".

[NashVegas]

1. I Hope This Stands

But am not counting on it.

[Poll_Blind]

2. 1. Good. I mean, really good! 2. Fuck Google

(I shall now return to using all of the other online services Google provides)

:rofl:

This case has got to be one of the most interesting copyright-related cases I've seen in a really long time. Essentially, Google was going for the kind of copyright infringement which makes The Pirate Bay look like a lending library and they thought they could get away with it- simply because they had enormous sums of money.

They still may.

PB

[blondeatlast]

4. +1 on all of your points. In an ideal world, where Google wouldn't

mske googols of dollars, I'd be okay with this. But authors and publishers need to eat--and my bookshelves need pretty spines in them.

[msongs]

3. remember when google was the cool upstart alternative? Now it is the dominant bully nt

[krispos42]

5. Wait, so Google can't archive books that have expired copyrights?

Because that's what I thought they were doing, archiving books that had their copyright protection expire.

It's 75 years, right?

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Not just expired copyrights, that is the problem.

Google has been sued several times for archiving books under current copyright.
THAT is the issue.

[Poll_Blind]

7. To my knowledge it was much more than that. It was out of print books as well.

And, of course, there's a huge difference between something that's out of print and something whose copyright has expired. BTW, the work to scan in books whose copyright has expired still continues which, IMO, is a great thing.

Most of the work, IIRC, is being done by libraries on their own time/dime. I could be wrong but I believe that's the case. It would suck if Google turned around and took all that donated time and energy and tried turning a buck off it- outside of Google Ads or whatever, of course.

I could be wrong about some of the above, but I don't believe so. And I've been following the story close-ish-ly.

PB

[krispos42]

8. Ahh.. out of print books

Yeah, that could be an issue. Publisher won't make any more, and won't let anybody else make them either.

Bah.

[bemildred]

9. Stupid argument, he will be reversed.

Google being what it is, anybody is able to steal make their own copies of the stuff from google, and do as they wish with it, so Google's effort "restrains" nothing.

[NashVegas]

11. At Some Point, The Internet and Its People Are Going to Have To Grow Up or We'll All Be Fucked

There are all kinds of things in the offline world that people CAN do but don't.

[shraby]

10. Google books is a great place to pick up local history

for family researchers. I've found many items for the county I work on that are useful for not only historians but for family trees. Tidbits that are very difficult to find without sitting in local libraries for hours and hours.

[NashVegas]

12. If You Can't Be Bothered To Learn to Use a Library

Or sit in one for a couple of hours, you really didn't want the information that badly in the first place.

[shraby]

13. I'm webmaster for a very large genealogy site for the county

I live in. I have so much material to add every day that I don't have time to sit in a library for even 15 minutes anymore. Until and after I started this website I was one of the library's best patrons. Read enormous numbers of books and magazines like Scientific American...non fiction for the most part.
Now I have helpers who gather material for me and researchers into the family history on my site contribute tons of material. It's all I can do to half-way keep up.
I just won an historic preservation award for my site from the local county historical site and the local library considers the site valuable enough that they pay for the webspace for me and plan to keep it online after I can no longer maintain it.
I appreciate sites like Google books for the old regional history information they put online for interested parties like me.
Don't tell me I didn't really want the information badly enough to dig personally at the library for it.

My own family genealogy was done in 1901, my family has been in this country since 1662 and had 23 people by my surname in the Revolutionary war. What I do is make it easier for others to find info on their families who resided in this county in the mid-1800s and forward.

One more thing, I don't use copywritten material on the site because others use my site to do research for books about various things concerning this area. The beauty of Google books is looking for biographies about prominent people who became legislators and some of their history in congress or in the state legislature.