Google print fails to honour writers rights

The Google Print project is under threat, as the Author’s Guild sues Google for treating copryright protection as an opt-in process, rather than automatic right.

Google makes a point on the Google blog that they only display a snippet of the author’s work and therefore claim fair use.

There can be few more naive comments. You would think that Google would have a legal team who can advise authoratively on the legal issues of copyright law, but it seems that even amateur hacks like myself may have a better understanding.

For a start, fair use is not simply about distribution, but also storage - it is an infringement of electronic rights to store a digital copy of a copyright work without authorisation.

In other words, if the Google Print project seeks to scan just a single paragraph of a copyrighted work, then they may be able to claim fair use. However, electronic storage of a larger body of copyright work without authorisation is an illegal abuse of copyright protections.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Author’s Guild has already successfully sued in similar cases of works being used in databases without consent from the authors.

Google are still trying very hard to show that the Google Print project is of benefit to the authors involved - but the big issue Google are not talking about is how they plan to monetise the project for their own profit regardless of author interests.

We know that Google is a for-profit corporate entity with share-hollders to please. Whatever original philanthropic visions may have inspired the Google Print project, the sad truth is that Google would almost certainly end up treating Google Print as a “scraper site” project - re-using other people’s content simply to display their own advertising.

While John Battelle may claim the exposure could help him, he overlooked the fact that if Google use any part of his content to supply ads from third-parties, then Google are showing no real interest in helping promote the books of John Battelle and others.

In short, Google is an advertising company with no advertising platform other than search - by using existing media content, Google is seeking to have media content under it’s own direct control to advertise in.

And as Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch has already asked, there is the whole issue of proprietary rights that Google may claim from the project - effectively, the danger of Google trying to claim properietary ownership for access of the documents it has scanned. I don’t believe we’ve heard anything on resolving that issue yet.