Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The actual legal issue being litigated was that Google, in order to provide book excerpt snippets in their search engine, created a database of scanned and indexed books. The AG position was that any use of the books other than individuals paying for the book was illegal.
After pruning away the irrelevancies and money grabs, the ruling was that inasmuch as Google's database was not distributing the scans and merely using it for internal purposes, to generate the excerpts (which are *explicitly* permitted under Fair Use legal doctrine) Google was not *distributing* anything that wasn't permitted by Fair Use..
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Except Google IS indexing the entire book and what they are doing is far beyond fair use. It's possible to download the entire book, because unlike a snippet for a review, quote or research work, the entire work is indexed and live on their servers, completely. Stupidly they also seem to use features of the client's browser. Google misrepresented what they are doing as Fair use as they are monetising the entire text with their search engine.