The Google Book Search legal case has far-reaching implications for all Net users, argues Jyoti Banerjee, not just for those that would like to see mankind's precious book heritage and treasure open to all.
Ever wondered if a clear-speaking lawyer was an oxymoron? That the two just don't go together? Well, wonder no more because Lawrence Lessig is living proof that lawyers can speak clearly. What has been exercising Lessig recently is the case against Google by the Authors Guild (AG) organisation in the US. If AG wins its case, not just would Google's Book Search project go west, but Internet search could follow suit pretty quickly after.
Imagine. MSN, Google, Yahoo and the rest all fighting for the same cause. Again, it sounds like an oxymoron. But the day could be close if Google loses or settles the case.
Some of you would wonder why an organisation like Google needs any protection. After all, it is now one of the big guys, having recently entered the list of the top 500 corporations in the US. And what is the Google Book Search project anyway?
Some months ago Google decided to scan something like 18m books so that searches could be done on their content, rather in the same way as we currently use search engines to search the Net. These books would then be made available to people using Google Book Search using the following guidelines:
- books in the public domain could be made fully available
- books with current copyright that are in print would be made available in accordance with any agreement that Google strikes with the owner of the copyright
- books in current copyright but out-of-print (and possibly with no known copyright holder) would be available in "snippets"
AG argues that by digitising books, Google has created the opportunity to create potentially a new market for itself, by charging money for works that are based on copyright belonging to others. Google is not planning to charge money for the books but could be selling ad space next to the searches, in the same way that it currently does with Web searches.
AG also argues that Google's use could negatively impact the copyright owner's ability to earn rents from its intellectual property. On these two grounds, AG's view is that Google's use of copyrighted material is not "fair use."
Lessig's dissection of the case against Google is simple and yet brilliant. Incidentally, it gets my unqualified recommendation for clear speaking and for interesting use of YouTube, an online personal broadcasting utility. Check it out for yourself if you want to understand the legal posturing involved. But the real motivation I had for discussing this is because there are two implications of this case that could potentially affect all of us.
1) Google Book Search is like Google Search
If Google Book Search is not allowed to extract chunks of the world's store of published material, for later search on the Net, then why should Google or any of the other search engines be allowed to extract chunks of the World Wide Web for later search on the Net? There seems to be no substantive difference between the two. If we can accept search engines trawling through public domain and copyrighted digital material so that searches can be done on them (with restrictions as imposed by copyright holders such as passwords, etc), then how can we object to search engines trawling through non-digital material like books, particularly when copyright holders can impose their own restrictions as to how much of the book appears in the search, via their agreements with Google?
2) 20th century intellectual property laws are struggling in the digital era
Intellectual property laws were conceived to protect creators against theft of their work by others. For the record, I am entirely in favour of the need for such laws. I do not subscribe to the mass copying or theft of copyrighted material that occurs in mass-market ways in industries as diverse as films and drugs.
The problem I have is that these intellectual property laws were not created for a digital age where we are soon reaching the situation where we will need intellectual property laws to protect consumers from greedy copyright owners (usually not the artist or creator).
I am not professionally qualified to comment on intellectual property. However, I find that the way legal use of intellectual property has been implemented in the music industry is a mess.
As a professional in the software industry and as a keen music lover, with hundreds (I am going to assume my wife will read this so I will only confess to hundreds!) of LPs and CDs, the online music world would have seemed a natural habitat for me. However, the draconian digital rights management imposed by the music industry on downloads has pretty much turned me off digital music altogether. I refuse to buy downloaded music which is restrictive on which machine I can listen to "my" music on, and where the protection mechanisms negatively impact the quality of the music I can listen to.
Sure, the music industry needed protection from download cowboys. But I feel the pendulum is swinging way over with such aggression that it is now the consumer wanting to keep within the rules of "fair use" who is being penalised.
The Google Book Search legal case promises to have important ramifications for all of us who use the Net. I hope wisdom prevails.
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