Ruling May Impact Google Book Search Case 172
jsherman256 wrote to mention an NYT article discussing another possible problem on Google's legal front. A court decision in another case may spell trouble for their 'book search' technology. "In the recent case, Judge A. Howard Matz of United States District Court for the Central District of California, said Google's use of thumbnail-sized reproductions in its image search program violated the copyright of Perfect 10, a publisher of X-rated magazines and Web sites, because it undermined that company's ability to license those images for sale to mobile phone users ... 'I think it takes the wind out of their sails,' Jan Constantine, the general counsel for the Authors Guild, said of the Perfect 10 decision. The guild and the Association of American Publishers brought copyright infringement lawsuits against Google over its Book Search program."
Re:Precedent for District Court Cases (Score:2, Informative)
In theory -- precedent for district courts doesn't exist except as it applies to the case at hand.
In reality, it can make a difference. A well reasoned, well thought out district court case which is on point will carry weight with other districts. For instance, the facts and legal ruling in Arkansas v. Jones has been cited and used 100's of times -- including by the Supreme Court, although it was never actually appealed. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District carries a similar type of weight.
Although other judges are not bound by the decision, they often choose to affirm them through incorporation into their own rulings.
That being said, in this case it is unlikely to have significant precedent -- since I imagine Google will appeal.
Re:not sure this makes a difference for book searc (Score:2, Informative)
I believe one of the criteria for fair use is that it doesn't cause economic harm.
The impact on the market is considered as a factor, but it is by no means the only factor, and other factors can easily outweigh it.
Consider a book review that uses a few quotes from the book to show that it is utterly factually incorrect. That review could clearly cause significant economic harm, and yet it is still fair use because the other factors [stanford.edu] outweigh the impact on the market.
Missing pieces of information (Score:5, Informative)
Perfect 10 blocked Google from indexing the site.
Third party copied the content and put it on their own site.
Google indexed that third parties site (not perfect 10's) compounding a existing copyright violation.
Whereas the book publishers can simply tell Google which books they don't want scanned and so they've given implicit permission by refusing to list those books.
Since fair use is a value judgement made by a judge interpreting a vague law, he sided with Perfect 10, but the same situation doesn't with the book publishers.
Re:robots.txt? (Score:3, Informative)
It's in the disclaimer, which almost all books I know have somewhere on the first few pages. Relevnt part of it reads (approximately):
"No part of this publication may be reproduced, either in part or in full, either photographically, electronically, or by any other means, without express permission of the publisher."
There you have it, the dead-tree equivalent of 'robots.txt'.