

Google wins the Book Search suit: declared fair use - cpymchn
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/us-google-books-idUSBRE9AD0TT20131114

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AnotherDesigner
Could someone here please explain why this isn't copyright infringement?
Aren't they taking other peoples work without permission, scanning it and
making it publicly available? Also, presumably all of this works draws more
traffic to Googles website, bringing them profits from advertising? I can
imagine if a company that was less powerful than Google did this somebody
would have huge fines and possible imprisonment.

And please spare me your "information should be free" arguments or the
possible "benefits" to society. I'm well aware of those arguments but current
law protects the individual against society raiding their work for its own
benefit. Its a basic foundation that so much of our law has been built upon.
So I'm interested in things as they are now, current copyright law, and not
how you would like it to be as an outsider that would profit from more liberal
copyright laws.

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ceejayoz
They're not presenting the entire book, are they? I thought it was just short
excerpts matching your search queries - essentially the same thing they do for
(also copryighted) websites.

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jamesbritt
That's correct, though I 've managed to read useful amounts of a book (several
pages) in response to a search such that it was much the same as if I had the
book on a shelf, flipped open to the part I needed, got what I wanted, and
closed the book. In other words, it saved me the expense of having to get the
whole book.

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cromwellian
The same argument applies to someone who read the book in question, wrote a
blog post summary of it, and quoted the most useful or valuable sections. If
your entire book can be summarized by a few pages, you've got worse problems.

It's like arguing that a movie trailer gave away the best parts of the movie,
so you have no need to watch the movie.

~~~
jamesbritt
_If your entire book can be summarized by a few pages, you 've got worse
problems._

Well, what I got from such cases was not a summary of a book, but useful code
or math or a technical explanation. Google book search can work like a
reference library, and if it's really good at that then I can see how it might
cut into sales.

For example, if someone publishes a cookbook (for food or code, for that
matter) it seems possible that people could just search for the small-ish
section they need and never have to buy that book.

In practice I suspect the number of _actual_ lost sales because of this is
minuscule.

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cromwellian
This situation reminds me somewhat of the situation of music before song
purchases, where you'd be forced to buy an entire CD just to get one song. It
may very well be that the modern textbook is the wrong model, and authors in
the digital age should design their books to be purchased or consumed in a
more fine grained fashion.

If a $200 math textbook instead was published as a series of $2.99 chapters,
students would be less likely to try to steal or avoid payment.

Most cases of piracy come down to distribution, delivery, and convenience
simply being improperly aligned with consumer demand. Do people pirate Game of
Thrones because they don't want to pay for it, or because HBO makes it too
inconvenient and expensive for the majority of people demanding it?

~~~
jamesbritt
The song/CD analogy is really good. If a book is mainly a collection of
discrete parts then Google book search makes it easier to read the stuff you
care about.

 _[A]uthors in the digital age should design their books to be purchased or
consumed in a more fine grained fashion._

Very true!

I've started, ever so slowly, to self-publish some technical books that I've
deliberately try to keep small. I want to offer just the best parts, remove
the fluff and filler:
[http://justthebestparts.com](http://justthebestparts.com)

It pained me to buy pricey books just for one or two chapters, and I see no
reason now not to publish things in more digestible and accessible chunks.

In a past life I did some writing for Wrox Press (the previous, went bankrupt,
version) and the editors were often very keen and having extraneous detail
added rather than encourage people to either Google it or, perish the thought,
go get another book (unless it was a Wrox book).

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Touche
FYI, here's the Google Books landing page:
[http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp&authuser=0&ei=Efy...](http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp&authuser=0&ei=EfyEUvv2Fqv54AOH6IDACQ&ved=0CBAQqS4oDQ)

What was once a nobel effort to index old books has turned into a front for
the Google Play Store. Sad.

~~~
dannyr
It gives you to buy books or search for books.

What's wrong with it?

~~~
Touche
It's like having a library run by a book retailer, with advertisements inside
the library.

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kevando
What ever the opposite of 'turning over' that's what Aaron Swartz is doing
right now..

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mtgx
Now they just need to fight off the TPP agreement, just like they did with
SOPA, so it doesn't nullify this win for them.

