[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Wikipedia is quoting Copyright Law of the United States of America
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
Which also says

Apparently none of these factors have been clearly defined. The general consensus seems to be that a lawyer is needed for each case.

I could as well quote other snippets from the same document that would seem contradictory. It isn't as cut and dried as you seem to feel.


From what I understand Google will not honor takedown notices because it would be very expensive for them to do this. (my interpretation of what I have read only)

In other words, they are basically doing the same thing as Google. They will honor valid claims of fair use infringement, and try to avoid the problem preemptively purely for the sake of avoiding a court case.

You can read an entire book to your children and violate no laws or let anyone read your own copy as well. Whether you can quote it in writing is not so cut and dried. Probably no one is going to take you to court over an email to Aunt Mary, but depending on various indeterminate factors it may be a violation of copyright law.

Yes, well the publishers certainly think so. They think everything is a violation of copyright law, because as far as they are concerned, copyright is a way of protecting their right to exploit every aspect of their work for money. Not heaven forbid to promote innovation and creation.

They would love a world in which even the books you own, you don't own. The First Sale Doctrine is the publishers' worst nightmare (something they have destroyed within the ebook market -- yay publishers) and want to use copyright as a justification to charge you for anything they can get away with. That is the REAL issue here. Publishers believe fair use is an excuse made up by people who just don't want to pay money to publishers for no reason.

Are you saying that Google making money makes it right? I am pretty sure Google is not paying each author money of the ads, although I could be wrong. Even if they are this does not make it right.

Lots of ways to make money by exploiting others, the use of a registered trade name comes to mind. Profiting off of others against their will even if you are sure it will not hurt them is not good thing IMO.

Helen

I never said it's all right if Google makes money. In fact it is quite the opposite.

I was pointing out

Originally Posted by eschwartz

And they make money off of ads by making the Google service more valuable.

In other words, THAT is their only motivation for the whole thing. They don't make money off selling books, stealing from authors. They make money by selling ads. More searches means more ads. Therefore it is in Google's best interest to make their search engine more valuable in peoples' eyes. Hence the book snippets, which makes Google Search more useful, which makes Google your favorite search engine, which makes you use Google more often, which means you see more ads and Google makes more money.

Google is NOT exploiting authors' work in any way. They are merely making their search engine more useful, by helping you find books more easily. Whether authors want that help or not is inconsequential, since Google is doing nothing illegal and thus authors have NO rights in this matter (any more than they can stop me from quoting the same quotes, from MY copy, to my friend).

The fact that Google makes money off book snippets does not have any bearing on, well, ANYTHING, since the ONLY money they make is the money from all your future searches that you make since the book snippets makes Google stand out as a better search engine.