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Originally Posted by CleverClothe
The trouble is right in the name. If you make a copy without the permission of the copy-right holder, you are violating the law. With the exception of fair use. But Google did not own these books, so I don't see how it could be fair use.
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Ah, but what are the limits of
fair use. That is the ultimate question here. Fair use, is by definition a legally murky area. If making a copy is integral to a fair use activity, then making the copy itself must be fair use. Now most of us seem to believe that the clients of Google who are reading parts of books online are in fact engaging in fair use; likewise, if Google was sharing hard copy versions that they had legally bought, it would also be an example of fair use. Therefore really, the only question is whether sharing parts of soft copy of books violates fair use?
My own personal feeling is that it does not. At the very least, it is hard to argue that sharing part of a work actually hurts the author of said work; at least, it doesn't hurt them any more than the ability to browse through a book in a bookstore does.
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I really like this agreement and wish the authors, publishers and Google had tried to work out a deal first. There may be some merit to the idea that this was the only way, but I am not convinced of that.
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With respect, the way the media companies have been slow to adapt to the internet (and book publishers most of all), if we waited for them to agree, we wouldn't have seen anything like this in the next ten years. At which point, everyone would be getting their e-books on darknet.
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Bill