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IIRC, Google has precedent on this - e.g. scanning full books for search unless the owner explicitly refused.

dylan604 3y ago
They are the ultimate ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Copyright has been a thing for a long long time before googs developed their scanning. They were well aware that it should have been an opt-in, but knew they’d never gain traction for their little project. So they bull in a China shop’d their way to a point of too far to stop them.
- philipov 3y ago
  They don't even ask for forgiveness. They are "don't admit you've done anything wrong to begin with."
- remus 3y ago
  Copyright is to do with protecting reproduction of works, no? What google has done here is scanning the book and indexed the content, presumably so it makes it easier for users to search books for relevant material. Assuming they don't reproduce large sections of copyrighted works in their search results I don't feel like they're doing anything wrong here.
  - tpxl 3y ago
    > Assuming they don't reproduce large sections of copyrighted works They do (or did). They showed the text around the search term, around a page or so, which made it possible to reconstruct the whole book without that much effort.
- extra88 3y ago
  Yet the keep getting sued and keep winning in the courts, at least in the U.S. Seems like they have a pretty good grasp of how the laws work.
411111111111111 3y ago
Your phrasing makes it sound like that's a negative. I'm honestly surprised they're required to abstain from doing so at the author's request. You can only read the context of the match after finding the search result after all, not the whole book. It's an example of significant overreach of intellectual property from how I see it. The robot.txt rational doesn't apply there either, as their scanning does not impact anyone's resources. And it's been published, which makes it public by definition.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
  Oh, I agree with you. I think the whole idea of legislating against machines accessing public content is a very slippery slope.

They are the ultimate ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Copyright has been a thing for a long long time before googs developed their scanning. They were well aware that it should have been an opt-in, but knew they’d never gain traction for their little project. So they bull in a China shop’d their way to a point of too far to stop them.

philipov 3y ago
They don't even ask for forgiveness. They are "don't admit you've done anything wrong to begin with."
remus 3y ago
Copyright is to do with protecting reproduction of works, no? What google has done here is scanning the book and indexed the content, presumably so it makes it easier for users to search books for relevant material. Assuming they don't reproduce large sections of copyrighted works in their search results I don't feel like they're doing anything wrong here.
- tpxl 3y ago
  > Assuming they don't reproduce large sections of copyrighted works They do (or did). They showed the text around the search term, around a page or so, which made it possible to reconstruct the whole book without that much effort.
extra88 3y ago
Yet the keep getting sued and keep winning in the courts, at least in the U.S. Seems like they have a pretty good grasp of how the laws work.

411111111111111 3y ago

Your phrasing makes it sound like that's a negative. I'm honestly surprised they're required to abstain from doing so at the author's request. You can only read the context of the match after finding the search result after all, not the whole book. It's an example of significant overreach of intellectual property from how I see it. The robot.txt rational doesn't apply there either, as their scanning does not impact anyone's resources. And it's been published, which makes it public by definition.

oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
Oh, I agree with you. I think the whole idea of legislating against machines accessing public content is a very slippery slope.