Susan Crawford, with whom I do not always agree, has a post about GooglePrint today that speaks my mind. Thank you Susan!
It goes something like this: There’s a lawsuit against Google, (big surprise… deep pockets… lawyers appear like maggots on meat… no offense). In order for Google (or any search service) in response to a query to provide fair use excerpts from a book, they must scan the whole book,thereby creating an "illegal copy." No matter that it is a private copy not intended to be streamed to anyone. The plaintiffs aver that this copy is illegal and compromises their rights as owners of the rights to the content. Susan says,
The authors who are suing are claiming that they’d like to license
their works for online searching themselves — and they’re free to do
that. They can simply ask Google not to include them in Google’s
pool. Their claim is that that’s too much of a burden. Phooey.
"Phooey" indeed. Go read the whole thing. Though written by a lawyer, except for the use of the word "dubitante," it’s really quite accessible prose.
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