I really admire the innovation and Google, and generally, think their
stuff is great ... I can admit that. Recently, Google's
initiative,
Google Print, is getting into some hot water with a lawsuit
from the Authors Guild. I have to side with the Guild on this
one ... Google Print is a great idea, but it's violating
copyright law.
ABC News and
The Christian Science Monitor
posted articles about the lawsuit, and it's easy to see two different
sides to the story. Even Susan Wojcicki (VP of Product Management
at Google)
blogged about the issue. (As an aside, it's great that she blogged about it -- kudos.)
So why is this wrong? I don't doubt the "coolness" of the effort,
or how it may help sales of hard-to-find books, etc. What I
disagree with is their interpretation of copyright law. According
to Susan, Google is fully "consistent with the fair use doctrine" and
"principles underlying copyright law itself." (That last one made
me laugh, linking to the Constitution.) More on fair use in a moment.
What I
also find inconsistent is her statement: "...especially since any
copyright holder can
exclude
their books from the program." The CSM article also refers to a
similar response, allowing the copyright holder to exclude the content
from the project.
Copyright law allows for the specific rights of reproduction,
distribution, and display (among others). I think Google Print is
a novel
idea: it certainly will make books easier to find, and will no doubt
increase sales for hard-to-find books. I think it's good content
to have on the internet. But, the right to determine how
copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, and displayed is completely in the
owner's hands, and isn't for Google (or anyone else) to decide or interpret. The
onus should not be on the owner to opt out ... the owner should
explicitly opt in.
So the question comes down to whether or not it's fair use: I guess
the courts will need to decide
that. Fair use is generally allowed for review or parody (as
Susan points out), but I don't see how that applies here. Review
may be a bit of a stretch; when I hear review, I think of Ebert and
Roper discussing the latest movies.
I can contradict myself by saying, "Well, what about search engines
that index and cache your website? Isn't that violating copyright
law? Or, what about Google Images, cataloging all the images on
the internet? Is this any different than indexing books?"
That's a tough question, and has already been tried
in this case where it was ruled that indexing images, in particular, is generally considered fair use.
One of the problems we're facing is that the "digital age" is changing
the way we think about intellectual property. In my
self-contradiction above, I feel there's a difference between a website
(and the images I place on it) and a book that is published. I
don't know how to clearly define that difference; I do understand that
the context of the internet is somehow different, and I expect that my
pages are generally public. I also know (as most people should,
if they run a website) I can simply use a robots.txt file to exclude
content from search engines. But, this doesn't answer the
question.
Although I realize the option to allow copyright holders to opt out is
likely a gesture of good faith to appease enough people from filing suit, it seems to contradict the argument of
fair use. So I say: stand firm on the fair use claim, Google, and roll
full steam ahead. No doubt it will cause upheaval, and with
the twisted knot of IP (intellectual property, not internet protocol)
on the internet, maybe this will set a much needed precedent. But, as I
predict, be prepared to lose this one.
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