Unlikely bedfellows Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr team up to make a case against Google Print in an op-ed in the Washington Times today. The piece is a response to Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, the Schroeder/Barr article is as shrill as Schmidt’s was self-righteous. At one point, they write, “Not only is Google trying to rewrite copyright law, it is also crushing creativity. If publishers and authors have to spend all their time policing Google for works they have already written, it is hard to create more.” That’s silly.
But Schroeder/Barr do raise issues that lie at the heart of how we’ll think about the ownership of creative work in a world where all that work can be stored in a database operated by one, or a few, profit-making companies:
Our laws say if you wish to copy someone’s work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that …
Authors may be the first targets in Google’s drive to make the intellectual property of others a cost-free inventory for delivery of its ad content, but we will hardly be the last. Media companies, engineering firms, software designers, architects, scientists, manufacturers, entertainers and professional services firms all produce products that could easily be considered for “fair use” by Google.
Google envisions a world in which all content is free; and of course, it controls the portal through which Internet user’s [sic] access that content. It would completely devalue everyone else’s property and massively increase the value of its own.
Google’s moving forward with its plan to scan copyrighted works into its database without the permission of the copyright owners. Whether you’re in favor of that or against it, it’s worth pausing a moment to ask where exactly all of this is headed.
Agree.
The privacy issues of some of Googles products should be discussed, and we should really ask ourselves what we want in the end. Googles products are great.
I really think the EPIC movie summarise the complexity yet leave it to us to decide what we want. EPIC 2014
If google can pickup others content for free, why not Google be forced to share its index with all other internet companies? May be it will happen at some point.
Can’t the same arguments be made about Google’s core business? Why is a book any different than my copyrighted web site. Google not only indexes my content, but caches it and makes it available to anyone who wants it. In doing so, they are arguably diminishing my revenue potential from my web site, right?
I would love it if someone could explain the difference. I keep getting the sense that Google is picking a fight here that could have disastrous consquences for their business if they lose. Am I wrong?
Thanks
As TMS says, it seems like this is actually an issue that already very much exists, not some new and consequential development that leaves us poised on the brink. Don’t we already know where this leads? Isn’t this exactly what Google does now, albeit with strictly digital media?
If they are opening up a can of worms, it’s to do with the idea of content indexing and search engines in general, not with print works in particular. Unless there is some distinction that many of us just aren’t getting… which may be, but I have yet to see anyone explain it coherently (there was a brouhaha on Slashdot today or yesterday, but although the point was raised, no one came back with a compelling explanation).
Yes, there is a potential can of worms here, as Kevin Werbach discusses in this post. I suppose (and I’m no lawyer) the difference between books and web pages is that there’s always (or almost always) been an understanding that if you put up a web page you accepted the fact that it would be indexed by search engines, whereas no such understanding has ever existed for books before. But as Werbach says, that seems pretty informal, and there seems to be a fairly large grey area here. Certainly, Google’s practice of serving up cached copies of web pages seems to go beyond simple indexing to outright copying.
Ok, maybe I am giving them too much credit, but this may be what Google is counting on here. If the courts rule against it, the internet would break apart at the seams, as Werbach says. As strange as Congress can be at times, it is highly unlikely they will allow this to happen, so no matter what happens, copyright law may have to be changed to allow what Google is trying to do with Google Print.
And yes, I do believe there was someone on the grassy knoll. ;)
I wonder about that, too, TMS. Not the grassy knoll part, I mean. But as with you, I may be giving them too much credit, but I tend to think of Google as deliberating fairly deeply and cautiously and thinking several moves ahead, and it’s hard to believe they don’t understand what picking this fight implies. Now, all that could be hubris rather than careful planning, but they may also be using this as a lever to hoist copyright into the 21st century.
The problem of copyright and the web, and code in general, has come up before, but rather than being settled in the courts it was, as Nick says, arranged rather informally–and to my reading (IANAL either) completely illegally. There are no provisions that I have ever seen that relax copyright protections for electronic works over their printed counterparts. It’s basically lack of awareness and goodwill that keep people from suing the pants of each other over such regular infringement. But if you’re planning to build an empire on it, goodwill and lack of awareness probably aren’t something you want to rely on. Forcing this sort of confrontation may be intended to bring certain people to the realization that the old rules are not adequate to deal with the new tools–like running cars under traffic laws written for horse and buggy.
What’s The Difference Between Google Print And A Bricks-And-Mortar Bookshop?
… How can it be true that Google is opening no new questions in copyright when they are clearly doing something that nobody else has done before by scanning so many books? I say that it’s just a matter of scale, and I’ll explain why…
The difference is authors publish Their books, by various publishers. They could use the option of making an EBook. If Google is scanning libraries and “publishing” that is blatantly not right. Pat “One Eye Winking” and Bob “Silly Stooge” Barr should not have to tell Google not to scan their creations. Google should be required to seek permission to publish. I want to buy Nick’s book ! He has a great writing style and (Hey Nick Send me a freebie autographed book) and broadcasts great idea !
Nick, Nor Winking Pat, Nor the Silly Stooge should be penalized by Google’s actions
Copyrights are copyrights and they should be repected
The American public has made Google into what Google is but that does not mean that Google can trample over “intellectual property”
Crazydave