Google Books Case Dismissed On Fair Use Grounds 124
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a case of major importance, the long simmering battle between the Authors Guild and Google has reached its climax, with the court granting Google's motion for summary judgment, dismissing the case, on fair use grounds. In his 30-page decision (PDF), Judge Denny Chin — who has been a District Court Judge throughout most of the life of the case but is now a Circuit Court Judge — reasoned that, although Google's own motive for its "Library Project" (which scans books from libraries without the copyright owners' permission and makes the material publicly available for search), is commercial profit, the project itself serves significant educational purposes, and actually enhances, rather than detracts from, the value of the works, since it helps promote sales of the works. Judge Chin also felt that it was impossible to use Google's scanned material, either for making full copies, or for reading the books, so that it did not compete with the books themselves."
Why can't I? (Score:5, Interesting)
If google can legally copy books (even when profit is involved) then why can't I do the same?
Wouldn't I get hammered with copyright infringement problems if I scanned in books I did not author myself?
Easy solution to "fair return" 9.8% like it or not (Score:5, Interesting)
> I don't mind people who did both processes getting a fair return but we need to decide what a fair return is.
It's 9.8%. Over the long term, they'll average 9.8% per year and there's nothing we can do to change that.
Suppose for a moment that there was a very high return. Let's say 50%.
Microsoft and their Bing divison, along with Amazon and others would be watching that and thinking:
We have $50 million dollars to spend on our next project.
We can either spend that on developing a game console, with an expected return of 2%, or
on digitizing books, with a return of 50%.
Fire up the digitizer!
People generally invest in the type of projects that are getting the best returns. So due to the 50% return, you'd have Google, Microsoft, and Amazon all offering different versions of the service. Maybe Microsoft would have no ads, but it would only work in IE11 on Windows 8.1.
Amazon's would be similar to Google, but with fewer, more obtrusive ads for full books that float over the digital pages.
With two competitors, Google's return would decrease. Specifically, new entrants keep coming in with different (better, cheaper, etc.) versions as long as the return is higher than other projects. It turns out that "other projects" return 9.8%, on average. So anything with a risk-adjusted return higher than 9.8% draws competitors.
If money goes IN to lines of business where it'll make more than 9.8%, where does it come FROM? From shutting down (or foregoing) operations that make less, of course. Any business with a risk-adjusted return less than 9.8% has some providers leave the market for greener pastures.
With the competitors close, their market share goes to the remaining competitors, so the remaining people get increased returns. Specifically, competitors keep leaving and the return keeps increasing until the return is as good as other options - about 9.8%.
So that's what you end up with - in the long term, any industry in the US has a risk-adjusted return of about 9.8%. Some, like oil or farming, are subject to high volatility - good years and bad years. Exxon for example is affected by oil prices, so it goes up and down. Exxon averaged 11.62% over the last 10 years, 7.86% over the last 15 years - everything swings up and down around that 9.8% mark.
Re:And if it was not Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just go read the Judges ruling.
You clearly don't have a clue about how the Google books search works. You are talking nonsense.
Nobody said google was only USING snippets. Google will only GIVE YOU snippets.
Just like the librarian that won't let you copy a whole book but will let you copy a coupe pages.
Google doesn't SELL these snippets. There is no advertising on the pages that contain Snippets.
There are unpaid links to stores that sell the book you are looking at. And some libraries that are
known to have a copy.
READ WHAT THE JUDGE SAID FOR CHRISTS SAKE.
Its a court ruling. Anyone who wants to copy google's model, in whole or in part can point to that ruling in court.
Unless or until it is overturned, it is the law of the land.
Please, I beg you, go read the ruling. You are making an idiot of yourself on the internet.