[Web4lib] More on Google's digitization efforts

[Walt.Crawford at rlg.org]

Well, that would be part of the court case if it goes to court. (Which it
probably won't.)

As I understand the Michigan contract, Google is returning scanned copies
of the books to the libraries. It can't do that without keeping a copy,
although I suppose it could not keep its own copy.

If this does go to court, it may be one of the more interesting fair-use
cases. I've seen very knowledgeable people come down on both sides...

[And if publishers were sensible, they'd applaud Google's effort, since it
should lead to more sales. That's a whole other discussion, to be sure.]

-wcc-

web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org wrote on 09/06/2005 09:16:10 AM:

>
>
>
>
> 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
>
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