Google and book copyrights

[Patti (baconater)]

How do you feel about this American Supreme Court finding?

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36...

[Jim]

Never challenge an American company in a US court.

[Michael]

I don't see how it harms authors at all.

[Jim]

It depends how much of your book is up there.

I know there are academic books I've not had to see physically because the bits I needed were available on google. But they were so expensive it didn't lose them a sale :-)

[Anna]

How much can someone browsing see?

[Pam]

The article refers to 'fair use' but that's a US copyright term allowing a certain amount to be quoted; don't think there's an equivalent in UK law, so I don't know that they would be doing it legally if they scanned UK books.

[Tim]

Pam wrote: "The article refers to 'fair use' but that's a US copyright term allowing a certain amount to be quoted; don't think there's an equivalent in UK law, so I don't know that they would be doing it lega..."

The UK (and other Commonwealth countries) equivalent is called Fair Dealing. It's effectively the same thing.

[Will]

Michael Cargill wrote: "I don't see how it harms authors at all."

I agree. I can't quite see what the problem is here. Copying parts of a book to include it in a searchable database does not copy the entire book. All it does it to make it easier for readers to find books. And that surely has to be a good thing for authors?

There are some naughty things that Google does in its pursuit of world domination. This doesn't seem to be one of them.

[Nuran]

I don't see the problem if it's only an extract. You're allowed to take an extract to review the book under fair use, and it allows others to decide if the book is for them.