Google scanning books, transformative or not?

Robotech Master wrote:
> I really do think they're more right than not to say so. They're not scanning the books to use them as books, they're scanning them to use them as search metadata, and without that kind of massive scanning and indexing you couldn't have that kind of book search.

Yes, and no. Yes, they must scan, duplicate, and index the duplicate, in order to offer search results. And yes, that has been declared to be fair use on web pages, ** as long as they honor the opt-outs**. 

But no, that's not all that they're doing. 

They are giving copies of the scans to libraries. That's not fair use. Libraries are good things, but they're supposed to BUY copies, not make them. It might be okay, if they're only  keeping and using ONE copy after scanning to destruction a book that they already owned, but that's not what's happening, much of the time. 

And worse, Google is SELLING copies, and then putting the revenue into a trust for rights-holders who they haven't yet found, let alone asked for permission to sell.

And worst of all, they're not reliably honoring opt-out. Some people think that this is deliberate. I think it's just incompetent. They seem to mis-enter title and author rather frequently, and then not find the match to the opt-out. 

In any case, Google isn't really honoring its own pledge to do no evil. 



Marion Gropen
Gropen Associates, Inc.
Consulting By-The-Question,  Tools & Classes for Publishers
www.GropenAssoc.com
Her blog: www.GropenAssoc.com/blog



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