Suber understates Google's plan for world domination.
This line from Suber's document is misleading:
QUOTE
When the lawsuit was filed, Google suspended its scanning of copyrighted books, but continued its scanning and posting of public-domain books without objection from any quarter.
Note
this page:
QUOTE
On August 11, Google announced on its blog that they are suspending its scanning of copyrighted works from libraries. Scanning will resume in November, which presumably gives publishers who are rights-holders time to opt-out with a list of books they do not want scanned at the library.
Yes, they suspended it for nearly three months. That was four years ago. Big deal.
The bottom line: Google has been scanning
ALL books that the library provides. The various libraries have no incentive to restrict the types of books it provides, because in the confidential agreements that Google made with the libraries, Google indemnifies them against any legal challenges. Moreover, the library gets a copy of the scan.
Take the University of Michigan, for example, which is Larry Page's alma mater and the largest library scanning project by far. Google has continued to scan all books from that library: in-print, out-of-print, in-copyright, orphan, public domain, etc. And all languages. The Chinese just recently said, "Hold on here, you cannot scan copyrighted material from Chinese writers." So has India. So has Germany. So has France. So has Italy. Google cut them out of Settlement 2.0,
but they continue to scan books copyrighted in these and other countries.Is Google listening? Nope, they just keep scanning. The Settlement completely sidestepped the copyright issue, which gave Google Four More Years of mass-scanning. Why did the plaintiffs, who sued on the grounds of copyright infringement, fall for it? Well, there's that little matter of Google agreeing to pay up to $30 million to the plaintiff's attorneys.
That's why it's called
a book grab.
