Google Print: A web full of questions.

1. What does Google Print do?

According to Google: Google Print aims to make offline information searchable through Google's search engines. When a user enters a query, Google returns results from books that match it. If the book is not copyright protected, Google print will allow the viewer to access the entire work; if the book is copyright protected, just a brief snippet will be provided. Other features accompanying the service are further searches revealing web-results related to the book, links to online booksellers or nearby libraries that have the book. How did Google get the text? Either through the publisher program or a library project.


2. Why are people excited? Upset?

Information available on the Internet has long been chided by many for having all too compressed information, fluff without review, and generally less value than traditional forms of publication like journals and books. If Google brings printed material to the fingertips of searchers anywhere, the Internet stands to gain a lot of value.

It is not entirely new. Amazon.com has had a search inside this book feature since October, 2003.

However, not all of the books that Google aims to index are necessarily free for the taking. Many of the books scanned in Google Print's Library Project are still under copyright, and some are being commercially exploited. Those that are under copyright protection by law, but which are not actively being commercialized, or those that are orphaned by their authors make up the majority of the works to be scanned in the Library Project. This poses a problem for Google if lawsuits (see below) threaten to limit the library project to works that are completely out of copyright.

On Sept 20, 2005, the Authors Guild filed a class-action copyright infringement suit against Google over its Google Print library project. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) feels that Google has a strong case, calling the service "the digital equivalent of a library card catalog." The EFF believes that Google Print is transformative in its use of copyright protected material, a key defense to infringement on the grounds of fair use. On October 19th, the Association of American Publishers filed a complaint in a U.S. District Court in New York, alleging that Google's copying of copyright protected books is infringing.


3. Is it Google's place to provide this service?

That is a question left to the political alignment of the reader ;-)

But seriously, if it were a library that introduced the indexing system, the viewpoints would be different. What makes people feel a little funny about the whole deal is that Google is not paying for the books, yet they will likely make a lot of money off of ads placed next to searches, let alone whatever else they can think of to do with the vast array of knowledge gained by having indexed so many of the world's published works.


4. If Google stands to make a lot of money, should they share?

Legally? Politically? Strategically? What if Google were a nonprofit or government agency? How could Google compensate the authors whether or not they _should_? Yes, there are many questions that are on the minds of people in the creative industries, as well as Internet visionaries. It seems so grand to imagine the world's works at your fingertips, but yet this vision takes a lot of (opposing) interests in granted alignment (this is not realistic).

Google didn't pay for the books that were scanned by the libraries, but someone did. Should this matter? Google Print may increase demand for copyright protected books if it improves the potential reader's ability to find what they are looking for and acquire it by purchasing it online. Is it authors who are getting hurt or is it the publishers? Google and Amazon just may be building an online publishing alternative. This would allow authors greater access to their readership without the need for traditional publishing agents.

In response to the uproar by publishers, Tim O'Reilly (himself a publisher) writes:



Along comes a player who says "I have a way to promote those books that the publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for them to find readers, and eventually, sales." The publishers complain, because they are worried that someone else is going to make money from their slag heap, or more likely, because they are worried that there's some downside risk to their top sellers, even if there's a lot of benefit to the bottom and mid-list books.



It is interesting and left to be determined whether Google Print would significantly stimulate demand for books that would otherwise go unnoticed. If so, would this subtract from the demand of best-sellers, and if so, would the net effect be to increase or decrease total demand for published material?


5. Fair use: Is it?

The purpose of copyright law is to disseminate information, isn't this what Google is assisting? Are the publishers greedy? Google made copies for their own purposes and can use these copies for research and development of their search algorithms. Does this fall within the scope of fair use? At issue in the lawsuit is whether Google allowing authors to opt out is sufficient, I wonder if it is necessary at all. The real issue, I think, is on which of two perspectives to hinge the intent of copyright law. Google is making entire copies of copyright protected material; even if they only let their searchers access snippets (easily covered by fair use), is the fact that they made the copy in the first place enough to warrant a claim of infringement and subsequent remedy or injunction? Not necessarily, the amount of copying is only one of the elements considered in determining Fair Use.


6. Conclusion:

Google is on a roll with this one. If they prevail in the lawsuit, they will earn their high share price and make us all turn a brighter shade of green. If they lose, it will be interesting to see how they lose and what this means for the next-gen Internet. This is certainly a precedent-setter, indeed. The ethics of the situation are left to the reader to work out. I think that as long as they preserve copyright protected works from being copied in full, limiting copies to snippets only (as they have stated that they intend to do), that they are not infringing on the rights of the owners by putting the material available on the web. I am not sure how I feel about Google copying the texts in full and keeping them in house as a business resource, but I lean toward thinking it foul-play. In this regard, with the knowledge I have, I would award copyright holders damages from Google's infringement.