Splits Copyright Law Experts on Fair Use

BNA

Thursday, October 27, 2005
ISSN 1535-1610
News

Copyrights
Google's Search of Library Shelves
Splits Copyright Law Experts on Fair Use


The Royal Library of Alexandria, reputedly the largest of the ancient world, got its edge when Ptolemy III of Egypt issued a decree that all those who visited the port city must submit their scrolls to be copied by official scribes.
That mandate undoubtedly inconvenienced countless travelers, but it created one of the great repositories of Western civilization. Now, 2,000-plus years later, Google Inc. finds itself confronting a dilemma not unlike that faced by Ptolemy's advisers: How much should the rights of property owners bend in service to creating the ultimate library of our time?

Representatives of authors, publishers, and Google sought to answer that question at an Oct. 24 panel discussion sponsored by the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.


Search Moves to Libraries

By any measure, Google's Print for Libraries project is ambitious. The search engine juggernaut aims to make finding relevant content in published books as easy as searching the Web. Google is partnering with five prominent libraries, Harvard University's and the New York Public Library among them, to digitize their entire collections and make them searchable by Web users. Google's pitch to publishers is that easy searching will lead users to lesser-known books they might not otherwise discover. Each search results page provides links to purchase the book from online booksellers, opening the door for new sales. Not all copyright owners, though, share Google's enthusiasm for the project.

The role of economic efficiency, and how that shapes the fair use analysis, is at the heart of the controversy. ...