Re: .Google, library books, Usenet, and copyright

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject:        Re: [IP] .Google, library books, Usenet, and copyright
Author: Edward Hasbrouck <edward () hasbrouck org>
Date:           14th December 2004 7:43:41 am

Google's unauthorized for-profit electronic re-publication of "cached" 
copies of Web pages has always been copyright infringement.  (The 
copyright holder can remove a work from the "cache", but such an "opt-out" 
provision doesn't satisfy the requirements of copyright law, whihc require 
explicit "opt in" licensing for anything other than "fair use".)  

Google's new moves, however, greatly expand its copyright infringement:

(1) The New York Times reports that Google will sell ads which it will 
display along with copies of library books.  Whatever "fair use" rights a 
library may have to loan out a physical copy of a book, they clearly don't 
extend to licensing commercial online publication.  Online publication 
that generates ad revenue is clearly commercial online use, governed by 
the terms of an electronic rights or subsidiary rights license, if any.  
In the absence of an explicit grnat of rights by author, it's copyright 
infringement -- online book bootlegging -- for Google's profit.  

The "limitations" on use of this content will, according to the report, be 
similar to those on Amazon.com's "Search Inside The Book" and "Google 
Print" -- which are completely ineffectual, as I've discussed previously:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000054.html
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/cat_writing_and_publishing.html

(2) Since Usenet is a "store and forward" system, someone posting to 
Usenet obviously gave some implict license for reproduction.  (Although 
what license was implicit must be considered in the context of the time 
when the posting was made, which for much of the content of the archives 
now held by google long precedes any widespread knowledge of publicaly 
accessible or commerical archives.) But posters to Usenet can't be 
presumed (either legally or ethically) to have granted Google the right to 
publish their work online for profit, create derivative works from it, or 
use it in latered form or without attribution.

Google now displays ads (no portion of the revenue from which is shared 
with the author of the Usenet content generating the ad revenue for 
google), and denies the author control over how their work will be 
attributed.  Google is creating a derivative work from the Usenet archive 
(a collective work to which has never owned the copyright or sought a 
license, and whose authors haven't been consulted  -- they may be able to 
opt out but aren't asked if they want to opt it), posting it online 
without attribution, and gerating ad revenue.  

This is copyright theft and for-profit online bootlegging by Google.




----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward () hasbrouck org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214



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