Concurring Opinions » Fair Use for the Google Goose; Fair Use for the Book Gander

"While many in the library, research, and technology communities have hailed Google’s recent fair use victory, some have expressed skepticism about who is the real beneficiary of the ruling. Some librarians have wondered whether their enthusiasm about the ruling should not “be tempered by the understanding that Google is not the do-no-evil corporation it once represented itself as being?“ Others, like Eric Goldman, observed that even though the ruling opens the door for competitors to replicate Google’s book scanning and presentation of snippets, Google already enjoys a significant first-mover advantage, making it unlikely that others would find it profitable to spend millions of dollars only to catch up with it. I agree that at least for some foreseeable future, Google Books will remain the only game of its kind in town. Even if the ruling stands on appeal, we should not expect any quick entry by any of Google’s existing or future competitors embarking on a similar mass digitization project on a the same scale, to do exactly the same thing. But it does open the door for others to do different, and possibly better, things, and this is important ..."