Comments on: Google Defends Self On Blog

By: Notebooki

Notebooki — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:55:21 +0000

If somebody is putting the protected text with copyright laws on a website automatically he agrees on the fact that everyone will read it for free morover it is possible to secure the text with the password or the robot.txt file, so if somebody is putting protected work with law for search engine and alone didn’t accomplish securing the text let alone is harbouring a grudge against himself.

By: web10

web10 — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:44:48 +0000

re: "... [Google's] writing seems to be driven by conviction and passion ..."

Ummm, conviction and passion for WHAT exactly?

Please choose:

[1] Making the infosphere a better place by scanning books

[2] Increasing Google shareholder value by placing ads where "no ad has gone before"

[HINT: This is a trick question.]

Of course, Google will share their advertising proceeds with the authors whose works were exploited ... err ... 'scanned'.

NOT.

By: Joik

Joik — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:40:37 +0000

"This ability to introduce millions of users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors’ books"

The down side of this is it will also expand the variety of available books, by passing the built-in quality checks of promotion and distribution costs, which may help a lot of bad books get exposure. I'm already running into some geography-related books that I had no idea existed, and possibly for good reason.

By: tosh

tosh — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 20:24:09 +0000

If Google has no hidden agenda then why don't they just make their legal agreement with the libraries public. Which let everyone see clearly what's in it for Google.

By: Brian Turner

Brian Turner — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:22:00 +0000

"This is a huge change from how I have understood copyright to work. "

The issue was really changed by the introduction of electronic rights, which is effectively an extension of copyright to digital applications.

So far as I understand it. I'm not a lawyer, just an aspiring writer, and electronic issues have been a hot issue for years.

By: larry

larry — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 05:02:44 +0000

Google blog has always been helpful to me. This is a good forum for blog lovers like me. Keep the good work going!!!

By: Jamie Grove

Jamie Grove — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 20:05:30 +0000

I wonder if anyone will bother to sit down and read a book once Google has indexed them all? Or will we all be so busy checking cross-references that it won't matter anymore?

By: Kendall Willets

Kendall Willets — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:31:58 +0000

As an experiment, last year I tried to see if I could finish a bioinformatics course just by reading the textbook on Search-Inside-The-Book. It was transparently easy. I only needed a few pages, and a search or two was enough to view all the pages that were relevant. Google's book search looks similar, possibly with less ID-checking.

The fact is that the "indexing only" defense doesn't necessarily work out in the real world. Most index structures encode a major portion of the work being indexed, and the phrase "self index" has even been coined to describe those which contain an exact, byte-for-byte copy. It's virtually impossible to keep the content from being scraped and knit together by creative clients.

True, Google is making some effort to protect the works, but these measures can amount to little more than the laughable DRM schemes that Hollywood keeps trying to shove onto the market.

By: Scott Lawton

Scott Lawton — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 15:46:40 +0000

Chris: did Google (or AltaVista or any other search engine that came before) ask each and every Website owner before indexing their copyrighted material? No, because it’s impractical. Instead, they respect the “opt-out” of robots.txt. Assuming that Google really does let the copyright owner of a book opt-out, why should books be handled differently than Web sites? Based on the facts reported, the lawsuit looks completely without merit.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:08:36 +0000

The only problem with your analogy is that the Authors' Guild is the teenager and Google is the grown-up trying to teach them how to share.

Why ask when you know the answer is no? Asking permission for something they feel is perfectly legal would only serve to further weaken our fair use rights. I'm glad to see Google using some muscle here.