GoogleLaw…
Wired News editorializes on the lawsuit filed by the Writer’s Guild of America against Google over their new Google Print program. Wired draws a connection between the current lawsuit and the infamous UMG lawsuit against (the now-defunct) MP3.com and their popular “Beam It!” (aka: Music Locker) service.
Google, too, could be deemed an infringer simply because it copied books without permission, regardless of what it does to comply with copyright law when it comes to using the information.
We believe this would be a mistake.
There are fundamental differences between copying analog works into a digital format for the purposes of piracy, and copying the same works to create a service that conforms to copyright laws in making that data available to the public.
What happens on the backend should be of little or no interest to copyright holders, so long as rights are respected on the front end, where control over a work really counts.
Wired, as always, makes a good point. In the time since the lawsuit was filed, I’ve heard many people refer to the idea that “Google Print gives you the entire book for free.” Actually, I thought the same earlier this week when I searched for a phrase that I was absolutely certain was misquoted in one of my textbooks. (the lone result, by the way, was the textbook in question – building an even better case that the quote suffers from an unfortunate typo)
“Look at that!” I said, looking at the page displayed on my screen. “It’s the entire page! With the search phrase highlighted! And there are buttons to move back and forth within the book! I could have gotten my textbook for free!”
Then I looked at the mess of underlinings and scribbled margin notes in my copy of Brown’s Social Science as Civic Discourse and realized that if I had relied on Google Print, I wouldn’t understand half as much of it as I already do.
And it turns out that Google has actually taken steps to ensure that I don’t do such a thing, either. While the entire text of the book is searchable, it is not completely available on line for reading. Google Print only allows you to view a few pages at a time (from page 17, it would only let me back up to page 15), and even then it displays them in a fashion that is hardly piratable except by people with far too much time on their hands – much easier to buy a copy of the book, strip the spine, and lay the pages down on a scanner to turn it into a PDF file.
Additionally, the Google Print FAQ encourages you to either buy the book or visit your local library if you wish to read the rest of it.
Honestly, it appears to me that the Google folks have been a little reckless in putting their program together. The publishing industry has been revving its engines to get itself a little bit o’ that RIAA and MPAA action for a while now, and while Google appears to be going to great lengths to avoid violating Fair Use, their methods involve a back end that requires some level of infringement.
That’s not to say that the Writer’s Guild is acting within reason – just that their actions were to be expected in the increasingly litigous world of copyright law. A quick scan of the Lulu.com forums (by the way – I publish work through Lulu and am a big fan of their service and this should in no way be construed as an attack on Lulu) shows a number of their authors are convinced that they are, in fact, bestsellers, it’s just that somebody is bootlegging their books from the DRM-free PDF files that Lulu sells and they’re not seeing a dime beyond the sale of the first PDF. Writers are a funny lot.
If you ask me, the Google Print case is yet another example that in this modern world, copyright law is going to need some serious revision. Rapidly-advancing technology is changing the ways in which intellectual property can be used and distributed, and the current copyright law is having trouble keeping up. It’s time to re-examine copyright law and consider that Judge Rakoff’s statement in UMG Recordings Inc. v mp3.com – that “Copyright is not designed to afford consumer protection or convenience but, rather, to protect the copyright holders’ property interests” – may not be wholly inaccurate, but may be in need of some revision.