[Web4lib] More on Google's digitization efforts

[NFinke at nurfc.org]

On 6 September 2005, Walt Crawford wrote:

> Lars notes, re a Chicago Tribune article on Google Print...
>
> One lawyer says in the article that you need copyright permission
> > to offer searches.  Perhaps then you also need copyright
> > permission to offer loans, catalog records, and what not?
> >
> > As far as I know, I can compile an alphabetic index to someone
> > else's book and publish it without asking permission from the
> > copyright holders.  In fact, I already did that,
> > http://aronsson.se/funkybusiness.html
> >
> > How is my finding tool any different from Google Print?
>
> Lars probably knows the answer already: He didn't go out and scan entire
> books and serials that he did not purchase or own, keeping the scanned
> copies, as part of compiling that index.

Lars made an index.  While he could have gone through the text writing down
note cards when he came across a term that he wanted to trace, he most
probably made the index by scanning the text of the book, reading the
scanned pages with an OCR, and compiling an index from the OCR'd text.
What he preserved was not the scanned page but the index, a document that
simply states that each particular word occurs on a particular place on a
particular page, i.e., a simple fact.  Facts are not copyrightable, at
least under US law.

I think if you read Google's description of what they are going to do with
respect to material still in copyright (see <
http://print.google.com/googleprint/library.html>) that it very closely
resembles my description of what Lars might have done.  They will create
digital indices of books.  When you search for a term they will give you a
report that tells you how many times the term occurs in a particular book
and shows you three places in the book where the word occurs, together with
a amall amount of text on either side.  This report could be produced from
the index, without using a copy of the book.  It seems to me that what
Google is doing is easily within the law as it currently exists.

Nick Finke

************************************************************************
Nicholas D. Finke                    Ph:513-333-7528
Librarian
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
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Cincinnati, OH 45202
E-mail: nfinke at nurfc.org
Web: http://www.freedomcenter.org


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