The Association of American Publishers and the US Authors Guild have filed two separate law suits against Google, saying that the Google Print Library Project infringes on their copyrights.
My understanding of the Library Project is that the information displayed about the book is the bibliographic data only. The exact information that publishers spend all sorts of time and energy trying to get out to Amazon, Bowker, BookNet (in Canada) and other data aggregators.
A user searches for book information, maybe using “Battle of Britain” as a keyword, and the Library Print Project screen–for books protected by copyright–will show that search term within a sentence or two to give the user context. The bibliographic information for the book is also shown: title, author, publisher, publication date, number of pages, etc. The full page of the book is never shown.
So why are publishers and authors upset?
In my opinion Google is not doing a good enough job expressing to publishers, authors and the general public that full pages are not shown on books protected by copyright. They are showing less information than what is available on most Amazon listings.
(Google is doing a good job of providing publishers with links to their blogs and newsletters. What I think they need to do in addition is get the traditional media talking about the exact amount of content shown on the Library Project listings. The conversation is drifting into a general debate about copyright and digital copyright and those are confusing issues. Look at the debate about Bill C-60 and the amendments to the Copyright Act in Canada. These topics are less clear than the root issues of the Library Project, which is a user is looking for book on X, Google shows Y.)
On the opposite side of the fence, publishers and authors are not clearly expressing their concerns. I don’t think the issue has anything to do with Google providing users bibliographic information. I think publishers and authors are concerned that a giant corporation will have access to the full text of millions of books. When those books do fall into the public domain, Google will be able to easily profit from having those materials. So the “free” service Google is providing publishers definitely has a labour cost associated with it for Google, who I assume is treating the scanning process as an investment in future knowledge acquisition.
Now why is that wrong? A work in the public domain can be exploited by anyone who wants to repackage it and sell it. In the case of Google they are doing the repackaging (scanning the text) years in advance of when the book falls into the public domain. But, they are not selling it and they are not distributing the contents in any way that infringes on copyright.
In regards to the Google Library Project, you have a company who is providing a service to book readers and researchers. Google is making books easier to find and buy. The nature of the internet expands the audience so the number of users who might be looking for a book on “Battle of Britain” increases substantially from just the folks in your local library to folks around the world. That’s a good thing. Any sales of the book, while it is protected by copyright, benefit the content creator (the author, publisher). Authors and publishers benefit for the entire lifespan of the book, the entire time the book is protected by copyright, 50-75 years after the death of the copyright holder.
Publishers and authors should really reflect on the root of their fears and clearly express those concerns to Google, then Google will have an opportunity to respond. But saying it is the act of scanning the text and equating it to photocopying an entire book is not the same, and I don’t think any court will think differently.
And authors who want to be included in the Library Project, don’t worry about it. It is better to submit your work to Google Print, which offers a similar service but displays the content of the book differently.