John Battelle has an intriguing analysis of the most recent copyright infringement lawsuit brought against Google regarding the Internet giant’s plan to create a searchable book archive as part of its Library Project. On October 19, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) filed a complaint against Google, almost one month to the day after the Author’s Guild filed a similar complaint.
Battelle believes this litigation “is a far bigger issue than simply book publishers wanting to protect their business models.” Aside from the general feeling among publishers that they are being cut out of the transaction process or “disintermediated,” the suit might also represent the publishers’ parent companies desires to avoid a slippery slope that might lead to similar archiving of video material.
And this is not just about books. If Google - and by extension, anyone else - can scan and index books without permission, why can’t they also scan and index video? Look at who owns the book companies that are suing - ahhh, it’s Newscorp (Harper Collins), Viacom (Simon&Schuster), Time Warner (Little Brown).
Cynthia Brumfield at 11:07 AM|Comments(0)
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