Authors Sue Google Over Book Plan

22 Sep, 2005 at 8:21pm ET Article published in Tech

A US writers’ group is suing internet search engine Google, claiming that its plan to digitise major library book collections infringes author copyright.

Google has a grand plan of “organizing the world’s information and making it more universally accessible and useful”.

It hopes to pump $200m (£110m) into creating a digital archive of millions of books from four top US libraries – the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, and of the New York Public Library – by 2015.

Submitted by: Trogan_1000

Source: BBC

Comments

22 Sep 2005 ~ 9:17pm Linc Sweet, another American get-rich-through-litigation technique.
22 Sep 2005 ~ 10:05pm profdlp What would your response be? Slash all the tires in Google's employee parking lot? Throw rocks at their headquarters?

Substitute the word "songs" for "books" and compare it to todays music copyright issues. Suppose they were planning on "creating a digital archive of millions of songs" - freely available for online use. Would that be cool, too?

If I had an interest in the copyright of any of that material I'd be on the phone to a lawyer right now.
22 Sep 2005 ~ 10:54pm Linc A more apt analogy would be if they made 10-second song clips available to help you identify the song (proportionally, it's probably closer to 1 second). Google is not making entire copyrighted books available, only a couple pages. If I were writing books (especially non-fiction) I'd welcome the free advertisement. "You have an entire book about my research question? Sweet, where can I buy it?"
23 Sep 2005 ~ 10:01am GHoosdum I'm wondering why authors didn't sue Amazon for doing pretty much the same thing?
23 Sep 2005 ~ 10:40am profdlp

General Keebler wrote:

...Google is not making entire copyrighted books available, only a couple pages. If I were writing books (especially non-fiction) I'd welcome the free advertisement. "You have an entire book about my research question? Sweet, where can I buy it?"

In that case I wholeheartedly agree; one would think they'd welcome the increased exposure.

Unfortunately, when it comes to things like trademark and copyright it seems to matter a great deal how much you huff and puff before you have suffered any actual injury. Waiting until you've actually been screwed is usually too late.