Google, Don't be that way
Dear Google,
Liar, liar, pants on fire. I don't blame you for lying. You've done something very stupid and you want to back out of it in a way that still lets you keep your brilliant idea.
Let us imagine what this might have looked like, had you gone about it the right way:
"Hello, Publishing World. I am Google, a vast search engine that makes all kinds of nifty things findable on the web. Imagine how awesome it would be if people could search the content of your books on Google. Imagine how awesome it would be someone typed in a phrase--say "Gertrude Stein criticism"--and relevant phrases from your book popped up in the search list. Now, the searcher won't be able to see the whole book, but they'll see enough to know if the book would be useful to them and we'll give them ways to then buy the whole book.
"What? You think that's a great idea? You're sending me books right now? Well, thanks Publishing world."
Now, let's reminisce on how you really did it:
"Hey, Libraries, wouldn't it be awesome if people could search every book in your collection through Google? Yeah, I know, it'd totally rock. So, why don't you start sending me all the books you've got and I'll totally start scanning them in? I mean, you own the books, right, so you can like totally do whatever you want with them, right?
"Aw, fuck, you know what, Libraries? I wonder if you actually own the right to make copies of all these books. I mean 'copyright' being, literally, 'the right to make copies' and all. Shit, I wonder if you can really give me permission to make these copies so that I can do what I want with them... Well, best not to think about it too hard. I'm sure once the Publishing World sees how awesome this is going to be, they totally won't care."
Well, surprise, the Publishing world like totally does care.
Don't get me wrong. It's a brilliant idea. But the fact is that the premise of your brilliant idea was contingent on you and libraries agreeing to intellectual property theft. Excuse the Publishing World if they're a little distrustful of you now, especially since you've never come out and said, "Shit, we have a great idea, but we totally went about it the wrong way. Sorry. Please let us try to do this right."
And really, attacking people who distrust you after you've given them every reason to distrust them is really distasteful.
The Publishing World is ready to get on-board with your brilliant idea if you'll just calm the fuck down, stop acting so defensive and say you're sorry and have learned from your mistake.
Love,
Aunt B.
posted by Aunt B at 9/28/2005 05:49:00 PM
4 Comments:
Uhhh, B, some of us aren't in the publishing world. I get the gist, but I'd still like to know what the hell you are talking about?
W
B,
You're right on that Google didn't go about it in an ideal way. The commercial nature of Google makes it really difficult to understand how they could try to apply any fair use rules. I'm not a fan of their argument that publishers can opt out of the program; they should have sought permission first. If Google had approached the publishers 1) first and 2) in the right way, things would probably be going much more smoothly for them.
Actually, just because it is a commercial use doesn't negate the possibility of it being fair use. It's one factor, but not always the most important
The right to quote something as a reference doesn't depend on whether it is used in a commercially sold work. It's fair use because you are not using much, and you are using it for a different purpose than the original work.
Since that is what happens when you use google to search for a phrase in a book, i.e. only a short segment with your searched phrase comes up, it's not hard to see that google has a case.
Another factor is there's also the effect on the market for the work (which I think this would improve).
it could hurt the market for searchable libraries, I guess if I had any belief that publishers were working on this, I might be concerned about that.
the question of scanning is a gray area - since they don't make the entire scan available to the public (i.e. as a substitute for the orginal).
But no way would I trust publishers to be smart enough to opt-in, even though I think this helps authors.
And I'm glad you said "the publishing world" and not "authors" since they don't have he same interests.
Lastly, plenty of authors are happy about it, which is to be predicted. Also to be predicted is anything which threatens to loosen commercial publishers' stranglehold on the industry will be loudly decried in the name of the authors they purport to serve.
Well, I obviously think it's a brilliant idea. It will increase the market for books and it'll be damn cool. But that doesn't negate the fact that they're being incredible idiots about the situation they find themselves in now.
Libraries can't make copies of the books they own which haven't yet entered the public domain and make the copies available to the general public. Period.
When Google went to those libraries and offered to digitize their collections, the libraries who said yes should have said no, that they had to get permission from the copyright holders. Period.
That doesn't negate the fact that Google's got a brilliant idea. It is a great idea. And, lucky for Google, the brilliance of their idea will outweigh their stupidity.
But shit, come on. It's painful to watch them petulently insist they colluded in no wrong-doing.
I'd have a lot more sympathy--even if they weren't going to ask copyright holders for permission--if they'd actually bought the books they instead got from these libraries.
So, while I think there's definitely a lot of gray area about whether Google can scan in books and make snippets available on the internet in the name of 'fair use,'--I honestly think they might win that argument--I see very little gray area in terms of copying a library's whole holdings and making snippets of that available on the internet. The library doesn't have the right to let a giant corporation make copies of copyrighted materials in order to make that material available on the web.
If the Publishing Industry had any balls, they'd go after those initial libraries.
And I find it very interesting, and very telling, that Google is shifting the conversation towards whether they have a fair use right to publish snippets of that material and away from whether they had the right to make those copies to begin with.
They might win the fair use portion of the argument, but I'm very skeptical about the other half of the problem.
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