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Originally Posted by murraypaul
Sounds a lot like the argument that sharing copes of music tracks helps the artists because more people will discover them, and possibly buy an album, doesn't it?
What gives Google the right to make that decision for authors? If they simply wanted to make a useful service, they would have made it opt-in rather than opt-out.
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Well, the publishers that signed the settlement agreement apparently saw some value in it, and didn't think it was just Google stealing their authors' works.
And your example doesn't work. Google is providing a relatively small snippet of a text and providing links to where it can be purchased. The only downside for an author is allowing more people to find their work and pay for it. Ya, it's an opt-out system, but the default isn't "provide entire text" if someone doesn't opt-out, it's "provide snippet".
There's would be nothing stopping you from scanning a book you own and putting up a snippet; that's covered by fair use in the U.S. The issue was, among other things, the size of the snippet Google was putting up. So it was never entirely clear in this case if what Google was doing was infringing or not; now it doesn't matter because the litigants have settled.
This is just cataloging in the digital age, not some sinister plot.