Still More on Google and Copyright Infringement

Today, an article appeared on Yahoo. European book publishers take their arguments against Google even farther than I do. They claim that search engines that bring up even so much as a word of a copyrighted work constitutes a violation of the author’s copyright. “The new models of Google and others reverse the traditional permission-based copyright model of content trading that we have built up over the years,” said Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the European Publishers Council, in prepared remarks for a speech at a Brussels conference.” He continued, “”It is fascinating to see how these companies ‘help themselves’ to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people’s content,” he said. “This is unlikely to be sustainable for publishers in the longer term.”

Apparently, a French news agency is suing Google for copyright infringement for using photos and story excerpts from countless web sites without paying royalties for it.

This, I think, goes a lot farther than even my outrage with Google’s arrogance. I don’t have a big issue with Google mining web sites for information and for including tiny snippets in search results. However, providing entire copyrighted books without the author’s permission and without paying royalties clearly goes far beyond the pale.

Clearly, existing copyright law NEVER anticipated these issues, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act provides no help of guidance. Congress needs to address these issues, and it needs to do so soon. The litigation has probably only just begun.

Until the issue is resolved, I will continue to vigorously support the lawsuits hoping to prevent Google from infringing upon my copyrights and the copyrights of every other author who stands to lose if the Google program goes forward.