Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The issue is Google making money (in several ways) off books that are under copyright without asking permission and adopting an opt-out model, putting the onus on the copyright owner to *individually* fight Google.
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Book reviewers -- the kind I take seriously -- routinely make money off books that are under copyright, without any opt-out or opt-in. And when reviewers pan books, quoting passages for purposes of ridicule, they hurt authors and publishers. Google Books, by contrast, is free publicity.
The little book snippets that google provides are comparable to fair use quotations in periodicals, and to the big snippets in academic studies written to gain tenure and thus more pay. Google Books is just as much a public service as the review-complete-with-quotes, published in a profitable newspaper, that warns me away from a bad book, and should be equally protected.