Google-Publisher Deal Ignores Elephant In The Room: Fair Use

gavinbaker's bookmarks 2012-10-08

Summary:

"On Thursday, Google and five publishers settled a long-standing legal battle over whether scanning university-library books and using snippets in search results can be done without the permission of copyright holders. While the agreement lets Google continue its work, both sides deliberately avoided tackling the issue at the heart of the conflict: What does fair use mean in the digital age? ... Google argued that the snippets it used in search results were protected under the fair-use doctrine. The company did not make whole books available without permission, but instead directed people to where the tomes were available.  But Google angered book publishers by not talking to them before scanning books. Publishers saw this brazen move as undermining their control over the books they've licensed from authors.  Google took on some of the biggest names in publishing, including McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, John Wiley & Sons and Simon & Shuster. The Association of American Publishers represented the five companies in the lawsuit filed in 2005.  Under the deal, publishers decide which books Google can digitize for its Library Project. Google can display up to 20% of the books OK'd by publishers and sell digital versions through Google Play. That's as much of the agreement Google and the publishers were willing to reveal. The settlement did not need court approval and the complete text has not been made public... Turning the disagreement into a court battle would have placed the fair-use doctrine front and center, leaving open the possibility that a judge's interpretation could give either side much less than they wanted. As a result, agreeing to disagree on their rights under the law apparently seemed like the wiser choice.  'In terms of coming to an agreement on what was fair use, it was an agreement to disagree,' Andi Sporkin, spokesman for the publishers told Wired. 'We were able to get beyond that and establish business terms. Did we come up with a universal definition of fair use? No...'  Google has not changed its argument that it has the right to scan whole books because it provides 'enormous public benefits' by making it possible for people to find them. Because it makes only snippets available, Google argues there's no harm to copyright holders.  'Google Books makes use of works for the purpose of allowing readers to find them, not to read them directly,' Google said in a court filing.  Nevertheless, having the whole book stored in Google's database without permission rankled publishers. They felt it gave them less control over their property... Now that the publishers' suit is settled, people and companies with a stake in intellectual property law will be watching Google's dispute with the Authors Guild closely. For now, the Guild continues to talk tough..."

Link:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google-publisher-deal-ignores-elephant-in-the-room-fair-use.php

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » gavinbaker's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.licensing oa.comment oa.copyright oa.orphans oa.litigation oa.google.settlement oa.aap oa.fair_use oa.google.books oa.authors_guild oa.libre

Date tagged:

10/08/2012, 14:22

Date published:

10/08/2012, 10:43