[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Oh, our first fight! I can't wait for the make-up sex.

are we fighting ? i think i'm just disagreeing with you.

The degree here was the highest ever by anyone in history. (Cue the Kip soundbite from Napolean Dynamite. "Like anyone could know that...") It was an intentional, systematic, corporate raiding of entire libraries. It was a private company deciding to ignore copyright for their own profit.

We may not like certain laws, laws may be wrong, but to ignore and redefine things... I'll stop before this becomes a conversation about the Bush Administration.

well, again, technically you're right ; but i just can't get that worked up about copyright laws, given how utterly, profoundly wrong and actually harmful i think the current ones are. (and although i don't in any way think or claim that google's actions had anything to do with this, i will point out that yes, sometimes when a law is truly wrong, you should deliberately ignore it, and call it civil disobedience). while i am capable of getting worked up about something on principle alone, i fear this is not one of those things, because ultimately the legal infringement that was done is not truly unethical, in my opinion, and the ultimate result is overall positive and beneficial to humanity in general, which the current copyright laws are not (on the contrary). i'm not saying the ends justify the means in every situation, just that in this particular situation, i'm not convinced either party is more righteous than the other.

I agree, but Google was not being altruistic here. They saw an opportunity to grab content they thought nobody was watching. Like a lady's purse on the back of a chair, so to speak. Out of Print, Out of Mind. And they didn't do so to "safeguard" it. They are a for-profit company. Publishers and OOP works are like a company with particular goods locked away in a warehouse. Because they keep the goods out of circulation does not give another company the right to break into the warehouse and use those goods for their own profit, no matter how much you and I want the goods.

It was a land grab. They got caught, were sued, and forced to behave. In this instance. Suits about YouTube content and other media grabs are still in the works.

well, no, not *really* like a lady's purse on the back of a chair (nice try), but let's not have the material goods vs. IP discussion *again*.

i grant you, google wasn't being altruistic (although... maybe they were also thinking of that aspect. who knows ?), they're out to make money. but so are the publishers, and copyright laws are currently just as much a "land grab" as google's scans (possibly more, in fact). you don't seem to take into account that copyright laws embody pretty much exactly the same things you fault google for, the ultimate difference being that contrary to google not only are they ethically pretty indefensible, they also disserve society's interests overall whereas google ends up actually enriching society (culturally speaking). Out of Print, Out of Mind, exactly : how many books are lost forever because they fall out of print before they fall out of copyright, and everyone forgets about them ?

i'm still not claiming google was not *legally* in the wrong ; it's just that copyright laws don't seem to me deserving of my righteous ire, and i think the google scanning project is a good thing overall, regardless of their motivations and the legality of it, whereas copyright laws need urgently to be drastically reformed (again, making a distinction between law and ethics). yes, as you say they tried to pull a fast one and got caught, and this settlement is an acknowledgement of it... but ironically it seems to me to be a sort of "pot calling the kettle black" situation. the only reason that's the case to begin with is that certain copyright holders (*cough*disney*cough*) pulled a far bigger fast one on *everybody* first, and they *did* get away with it.