9 ms·
Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project
- tokenadult 11y agoIt's good that this news report includes a citation to the case decision at the end of the article. That citation is Authors Guild v. Google Inc., 13-4829, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Manhattan) The ruling applies, of course, only to the United States, and only if it is not reversed by the United States Supreme Court. But I think the argument that Google's use of the book content is not market-destroying for book authors is correct, as I have bought books after discovering them through Google Books searches.
- jessriedel 11y agoIt has to be that these sorts of lawsuits are supported by a small minority of authors, right? It's crazy. Who has ever planned to buy a book and thought "hey, I'll just use the Google Book Search to read through it"? I've never heard of 99% of the books that turn up on these searches, and I have ended up buying at least 2 or 3 of them.
- officemonkey 11y agoYesterday I downloaded a sample of "Ball Four" (one of the books mentioned in the article) from Amazon. No doubt Amazon has permission to do such a thing, but it is pretty odd for some authors to be worried about one type of sampling and not another kind.
- dtparr 11y agoSince precedent-wise, it only applies in the Second Circuit (CT, VT, and NY), I wonder if there are any similar cases (or if there's another entity that might try their luck against Google elsewhere, say in the 9th Cir.) that might result in either an a concurrence with the 2nd, or a split that would 'force' SCOTUS to weigh in.
- informedaboutit 11y agoThe ruling - http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/fda8f124-b1e9-45d3-91f0-ac17f42e3507/1/doc/13-4829_opn.pdf http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/fda8f124-b1e...
- iso8859-1 11y agoOn Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
- planfaster 11y agoI hope this is not too off-topic but since we are talking about book-scanning, how would I go about scanning my own books for private use? For instance, if I have a bunch of books about drawing, I'd like to scan them all so that I later group all of the figure drawing pages in one folder, all the gesture drawing pages on another, etc, so they can be more easily used (and more useful) as reference. Does anyone here recommend a way to scan books at home? I'm not against buying a contraption.
- rryan 11y agoGoogle developed a system called the "cheese grater" and open-sourced the plans / design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JuoOaL11bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lLL0mUZHwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lLL0mUZHwU https://code.google.com/p/linear-book-scanner/ https://code.google.com/p/linear-book-scanner/ http://linearbookscanner.org/ http://linearbookscanner.org/
- dublinben 11y agoThere's an entire community dedicated to making inexpensive devices to scan books.[0] You will probably also have access to a commercial grade book scanner at any large library. [0] http://www.diybookscanner.org/ http://www.diybookscanner.org/
- cmsmith 11y agoI have done one or two books using the glass plate + camera method: camera mounted on a tripod, book opened up halfway, and a glass plate to hold the pages flat while taking the pictures. I think my workflow was 5ish seconds per page. If I were to do more and had the space, I would have gone the diybookscanner.org route to improve the quality and processing rate. At one point I belonged to a hackerspace in Oakland that had one available. Post-processing workflow was much easier, and involved using scantailor (awesome free software to batch align, crop, white balance, etc the pages) and then Acrobat for OCR.
- smd4 11y agoI just got into book scanning ~6 weeks ago. I was partly inspired by the August HN discussion of Jason Scott's rescue mission of 25k manuals [0], and intrigued by Jason's kind warning to "the next person to mention the Linear Book Scanner (a prototype that destroys books)". Emeritus community hero Daniel Reetz spent 6 years creating the "Archivist" scanner [1]. He and his collaborators have done a phenomenal job, and created some of the best documentation I've seen for any project (open-source or otherwise). The "Lessons Learned" front matter alone is inspiring [2]. So far I've found that book scanning is an ideal "DIY" project: enough hardware & software quirks that are gratifying to puzzle through, but nothing super difficult. In fact, it is exactly like building and calibrating a simple scientific instrument and learning to collect and process image data. To @planfaster or anyone who is considering book scanning for private use, definitely do it! I highly recommend buying the "Archivist" scanner kit + electronics pack available at http://tenrec.builders/ http://tenrec.builders/. There is ample hard-earned wisdom in the forums and tenrec supplemental docs about dozens of minor process details where you think "Why don't people just do X?" and it turns out X isn't ideal, and neither is Y, but Z works fine. The main thing that I didn't consider before starting was that the scanner hardware only facilitates one very specific part of the workflow: taking pictures of flattened pages with (nearly) identical resolution and positioning. It's an important step, and reducing it to 5 seconds per page doesn't magically eliminate tedious downstream processing with other tools[3]. All that said, it's very rewarding, and really fun to start thinking about what you can do with scans, e.g. turn entire books into posters [4]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10070529 [1] http://www.wired.com/2009/12/diy-book-scanner/ http://www.wired.com/2009/12/diy-book-scanner/ [2] http://www.diybookscanner.org/archivist/?page_id=25 http://www.diybookscanner.org/archivist/?page_id=25 [3] http://scantailor.org/ http://scantailor.org/ [4] https://twitter.com/smd4/status/655092522071420929 https://twitter.com/smd4/status/655092522071420929
- baldfat 11y agoAs a former librarian I say YES! The typical librarian actually doesn't fight for the access of materials but fights to enforce copy right stricter than the copy right law even calls for. At my college I took down the sign that said "No Copying of Books" at the photo copier and I put in place the actual copy right law. I can't tell you how many visiting librarians were "shocked" I did that. Well we also allowed bottles of water and talking in all areas except the study rooms and areas that had doors, but that is another story.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoFirst, thanks for being a librarian. Second, I don't think traditional librarians know how quickly the end is coming. Libraries will still exist of course, possibly as makerspaces, possibly as community centers, but with collections like "Library Genesis" [+] and storage continually to plummet in price, in the next 5 years entire libraries could be carried in your pocket. EDIT: I'm not saying librarians aren't necessary! Quite the contrary! I believe their roles are going to shift to be advisors and guides. I'm saying the idea of the library as a place to go get knowledge itself is going to tail off, since its available over the Internet Firehose. [+] "Library Genesis is an online repository with over a million of user-contributed books and is the first project in history to offer everyone on the Internet free download of its entire book collection (as of this writing, about 15 Tb of data), together with the all metadata and code for webpages. The most popular earlier repositories, such as Gigapedia (later Library.nu), handled their upload and maintenance costs by selling advertising space to the pornographic and gambling industries. Legal action was initiated against them, and they were closed. News of the termination of Gigapedia/Library.nu strongly resonated in academic and book lovers’ circles and was even noted in the mainstream Internet media, just like other major world events. The decision by Library Genesis to share its resources has resulted in a network of identical sites (so-called mirrors) through the development of an entire range of Net services of metadata exchange and catalog maintenance, thus ensuring an exceptionally resistant survival architecture."
- intopieces 11y agoI agree with you about the end, but not that traditional librarians aren't aware of it. Because of their tenuous funding source, librarians have become masters at adaptation. They meet constantly to re-evaluate their goals and their place in the community. They are vitally important, especially to those with limited access to technology (homeless, working poor). I do see them evolving further as community centers and that's a good thing.
- NiftyFifty 11y agoSince when does the right of the owner shift to the consumer with respect to artistic creation? This sets off all kinds of red flags on all things created. The view is narrow, and lacks a broader view on the scope of artists in particular - namely photographers!
- gojomo 11y agoThe 'fair use' tests do take the effect on the creator into consideration. It's just not the only consideration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
- njharman 11y agoBy "owner" are you trying to mean "copyright holder"? and by "consumer" I'll assume you mean "not the copyright holder or licensee". If yes, then ever since copyright law was enacted. It's called fair use and the public domain. Also note not all artistic creation is actually copyrightable.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Since when does the right of the owner shift to the consumer with respect to artistic creation? It doesn't. However, this isn't about rights shifting from the owner of a copyright interests to someone else, its about power to exclude particular uses that the owner of a copyright interest never had (note that statutory fair use is largely a codification of pre-existing case law on fair use which was grounded in the First Amendment, and so generally addresses powers that not only the copyright owner never had under the law, but powers which Congress could not give the copyright holder, because doing so would violate an explicit Constitutional limitation on the powers of Congress.)
- ericras 11y agoI wasn't able to find much info on the current status of these efforts. Has Google (and their university/library partners) continued over the last ten years? I was under the impression that Google had suspended scanning years ago - partly due to this lawsuit and partly due to a change in company focus.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 11y agoOk this is pretty cool, I've been waiting for the 2nd Circuit to decide this. Now to see if the Supreme Court will take it up. I believe that this would also clear up a service that scans your books and sends you the digitized version. That would seem to be fair use of my own library as well. I spent about $1200 getting roughly a 1/3 of the volumes I've collected over the years digitized at 600 DPI so that I could have them all available on my iPad for reference.
- gshubert17 11y agoMay I ask where you scanned your books? I've used 1dollarscan.com before for some book scans, which worked pretty well.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago1dollarscan for most of them. There was a short lived outfit in Sunnyvale that did some before a lawyer came by and presented a cease and desist. I've also acquired a nice guillotine paper cutter and a Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500 and have probably scanned 40 or 50 "trade" paperbacks with it, 6 years of Scientific American, several years of Air & Space, Nature: Materials, and assorted other magazines.
- shmulkey18 11y agoWhat kind of guillotine paper cutter did you purchase? How many page books can it cut through?
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThis one: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQGK1FQ/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BQGK1FQ/ although I replaced some of the clamp hardware as it didn't hold glossy magazines as well as I would have liked.
- CydeWeys 11y ago1dollarscan doesn't seem that good to me, what am I missing? It's $2 per 100 pages if you want OCR, and even then it's not clear what output format they're delivering -- it sounds like it's still a PDF? The entire point of eBooks to me is that you end up with actual text, not just scans. And $8 per average length novel seems like a lot just to chop a book in half, throw it through an auto-feed scanner, and run an OCR program.
- 13thLetter 11y agoIt's great that this may soon be resolved once and for all -- assuming the Supreme Court doesn't put the brakes on -- but it's nightmarish that it has been dragging on since, literally, 2005. We've got to find some way to speed the legal system up; that might make it so you don't have to be Google to win an important case, too.
- username3 11y agoNow we can run a search engine that just returns Google results since the top 10 results are just a small portion of the total results.
- guelo 11y agoGoogle Search results are not a creative work protected by copyright.
- an0nym1ty 11y ago>Google has scanned more than 20 million books since 2004 without the permission of the authors. I am blown away how this is ruled legal, but in many cases scanning books as an individual is considered copyright infringement. As though they don't reap financial benefit from expanding the scope of the data they control? It's their entire business model...
- detaro 11y agoScanning books almost certainly is not copyright infringement. Tons of people do it. What you do with the scans afterwards matters more.
- nkurz 11y agoScanning books almost certainly is not copyright infringement. At least in the US, you are overstating the certainty. While I agree with you that it should not be infringement, prior to this ruling, the legal status of scanning books you own for personal use was not clear. The qualified expert opinion I got regarding personal scanning was from a law school professor specializing in copyright (and who actually participated this case), and was along the lines of "it's probably legal but there is not yet settled case law". This ruling probably moves it closer to settled, but I'd be suggest against placing large bets unless your qualifications exceed hers.
- detaro 11y agoInteresting and surprising given that companies exist that offer it as a service, but I stand corrected.
- nkurz 11y agoThey exist, but are well aware of the risks. And sometimes they find it wise not to test the legal boundaries: Any book you cannot scan? Unfortunately, WE CANNOT SCAN ANY PUBLICATION BY McGraw Hill. They do not allow us to scan their publications. When we receive any publication by McGraw Hill from customers, we will return it back by charging actual postage fee." http://1dollarscan.com/faq.php#8a http://1dollarscan.com/faq.php#8a
- jstalin 11y agoThe court's opinion is available here: https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/ca2/13-4829/230-0.html https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/ca2/13-4829/230-0...
- nkurz 11y agoThere's nothing wrong with the linked Bloomberg article, but it's a little barebones and link-free. Here are two others with a little more background and commentary: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151016/08010632559/appeals-court-explains-yet-again-to-authors-guild-that-googles-book-scanning-is-fair-use.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151016/08010632559/appea... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/appeals-court-rules-that-google-book-scanning-is-fair-use/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/appeals-court-rul... And the Court's actual written opinion: http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/c3458e0a-f3d2-492f-a8b3-6e1121cd5cff/1/doc/13-4829_opn.pdf http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/c3458e0a-f3d...
- brianzelip 11y agoSurprised to read about the perceptions of and experiences with (mostly pre-university school) librarians here. As a new academic librarian and recent graduate of UIUC's iSchool (top library school in the country[0] and an active hub of computer science), my experience is that the strict and shushing librarian is, mostly, as you all are recalling, a thing of the past. Libraries are more and more about collaboration, computing, and guidance. Kitchens more than grocery stores. Librarians are more and more facilitators, teachers, and collaborators. The open access movement has a very strong base in libraries. [0] http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-library-information-science-programs/library-information-science-rankings http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...
- gojomo 11y agoThis is a great win for fair-use, and matches Google's original rationalization for why their scanning was justified. Note, though, that Google in the middle years of this dispute sought to acquiesce to a class-action settlement with the Author's Guild. That would have more-or-less abandoned the (strong and ultimately successful) fair-use argument, and set up a system where Google and the Author's Guild were economically aligned, with a precedent against other (less deep-pocketed) groups who might want to make a similar fair-use argument in the future. Third parties including the American Libraries Association, EFF, and ACLU objected to the potential negative effects on competition, privacy, and free-speech of that proposed settlement, which helped prevent it from being accepted by the courts. That forced Google to fall back to its original defense, and led to this broader win for fair-use principles. For more details, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Book_Search_Settlement_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Book_Search_Settlement_...
- yohui 11y agoReading the article, I do not see how rejecting the settlement between Google and the Authors' Guild improved the situation vis-à-vis censorship and privacy. I also do not see how approving the settlmenet would have prevented others from reaching a similar arrangement with the Authors' Guild, since Google was not granted exclusive rights. Nor do I see how the settlement would have threatened fair use: it would only have released Google from the burden of continuing to fight on behalf of fair use in this case, not that someone else could not have taken up the fair use argument. Practically, the result of rejecting the settlement seems to have been a slowdown in the pace of digitization, and that readers are left with still no way to easily access orphaned works.
- gojomo 11y agoWith a finalized class settlement, Google would have stopped fighting for fair-use rights, and entered into a moneymaking partnership with the Authors' Guild with a unique right – established by the expansive class including all authors not yet even identified – to scan and even market books, and be immune from further lawsuits from the class. Anyone with shallower-pockets that then tried to do what Google did would likely have been sued by Authors' Guild – now strengthened by Google cash – or other members of the class. There was no precedent or requirement that others be offered the same deal as Google: if Authors' Guild liked their deal with Google (and why wouldn't they), they could tell others, sorry, we've already got a system in place, you're not part of it. But further, why should other 'little guys' have had to fight a legal battle with Authors' Guild, or negotiate under threat of litigation by a de facto Authors' Guild-Google alliance, just to do something that (now, finally) is clearly authorized by fair-use? The class settlement's Google-financed-and-managed system, for the benefit of the Authors' Guild class, would have started with an overwhelming and likely legally and economically insurmountable advantage in the scanning and marketing of older books. That gave rise to the centralization and privacy/censorship concerns of the ACLU, EFF, and American Libraries Association. They're smart and like old books, too – but perceived a risk that outweighed the benefit of "just scan 'em all quickly – under a Google/Authors' Guild monopoly".
- heimatau 11y agoI think it's important to mention that Google only returns 'snippets' of the text. The entire book is searchable and indexed but Google book-scanning project prevents use to read the entire book. The court ruled this is fair use since it enables the searcher to find out if the searched book has substantial information regarding their research/searching.
- joering2 11y agoOne could wonder if the same rule would apply to music. Would it be okay to have 30 seconds of any song available free online, just so that you could search for a lyrics of the song you heard on the radio, and then match it with 30 sec audio clip to find out whether the song is the one you were looking for.
- ap22213 11y agoI'm not sure that I agree with this ruling. Although Google says that they're using it for one specific purpose, I can imagine that they'll use it for other things like improving their search and ad technologies. If that's the case, then wouldn't Google's work be considered derivative of the original content? Why should the authors involved not be able to re-sell those digitalized versions to other companies (especially other search engines)? There are probably lots of companies that would like that data set and be willing to pay for the use of it (including me).
- skybrian 11y agoIt's also possible that someone who reads a book might learn something from it and go on to make a lot of money based on what they learned, without compensating the author. Should this be different for machine learning?
- conover 11y agoTextbook authors hate them!
- jim-greer 11y ago> If that's the case, then wouldn't Google's work be considered derivative of the original content? The ruling pretty much addressed this already: "Plaintiffs’ contention that Google has usurped their opportunity to access paid and unpaid licensing markets for substantially the same functions that Google provides fails, in part because the licensing markets in fact involve very different functions than those that Google provides, and in part because an author’s derivative rights do not include an exclusive right to supply information (of the sort provided by Google) about her works." If that's the opinion concerning providing search in the books, I think it's highly likely that the same logic would apply to improving search and even ads.
- GPGPU 11y agoI would love it if the publishers and google figured out a proper way to pay to read books that were still under copyright. I'd love to get rid of all my bookshelves knowing that if I wanted access to a particular book I could pay a few dollars and get it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- abandonliberty 11y agoUnless works under copyright are fortunate enough to be picked up as educational material/insanely popular, they usually vanish. Scanning helps with discovery and recovery. The gap in our cultural heritage is huge[1] [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140114/10565225874/copyright-week-our-lost-culture-what-we-lose-having-killed-public-domain.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140114/10565225874/copyr...
- joering2 11y ago> Judge Denny Chin ruled in November 2013 that Google Books provides a public benefit and doesn’t harm authors. I'm interested what kind of evidence played a role here. How does the judge determine it didn't harm authors, other than using a time machine?
- cronjobber 11y agoFrom what I hear (IANAL) fair use doesn't trump DRM anti-circumvention laws. It would therefore seem that this ruling creates even more incentive for publishers to drop non-DRM'd formats. If true, I'd count this decision as a net negative. (Sorry Google, your balance sheet means nothing to me.)