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Originally Posted by bill_mchale
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?
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I think it's great what Google is doing. And I think you're right when it comes to excerpts of works. They have a long history of being considered fine for fair use. I do, however, doubt that it would be legal to download a book from their service without some kind of licensing in place first. From what I can tell, it wouldn't be covered under fair use.
If Google makes a copyrighted book available for free, without licensing it first (and providing fair compensation to the authors for each download), how is that different from what got The Pirate bay and Napster in hot water?