Comment Re:Defense? (Score 1) 240
"First sale rights means that I am allowed to sell the copy of a book that I bought."
Apologies, I thought I remembered first sale include more general rights to make personal use of a copy, but I think you're right. (The same rights may still exist but more likely fall under fair use.)
"First sale rights does not allow me to let you scan my copy of the book."
If we permit a library to scan its own books, and then provide a google-books like search in them, then I wonder where we'd draw the line?:
- Universities A, B, and C each provide full-text search of their own collections.
- Google provides Google book searches by collating results from searches sent to A, B, and C.
- Google in addition rents and/or sells hardware and services necessary for A, B, and C to scan and provide full-text search to their collections. At this point it's just Google book search except that the data stored in Google's data servers is nominally still the university's.
- Google book search.
To me the differences all seem unimportant as long as the only use of the scans is to provide search results.