Back in 2007 I wrote a long-ish piece on the Google Books project. The stripped-down conclusion was that Google's attempt to scan and digitize every book ever written would be determined in the courts because, fawning tech writing to the contrary, Google's scheme represented two structural challenges to the nature of American copyright law.Google tried to short-circuit their legal problems by simply purchasing a settlement with various copyright holders--you can do that sort of thing when your market cap is $189B. But earlier this week Judge Denny Chin ruled that this settlement was unacceptable because it would create a de facto monopoly at the expense of un-represented copyright holders. (Part of Google's legal argument was that their monopoly position should actually entitle them to infringe on copyright.)
But don't cry for Google.
[Read the rest at the above link.]
No comments:
Post a Comment