Google Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use (updated)

The experience at Mises.org is that every time they convince some publisher to let them digitize and make a text available online gratis, sales of the dead-tree versions go up.

Digitizing makes these books searchable, which is a fantastic boon to researchers and people who want to find things.

Now it's generally obscure economics texts at Mises.org, yet the same basic argument is made by HBO, who does no advertising, and has found that the more vigorous the "illegal" sharing of their shows, the more subscribers they gain!

This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the article. Being able to do keyword searches on a library of written works makes it more likely that someone is going to find out about a book that they might wish to buy.

What Google want to do (as well as make lots of money of course) is make the texts searchable. Reading the texts in their entirety will not be possible. How can this be anything other than good for authors or publishers? It's "free" advertising and for a lot of works that may not be immediately accessible.

I really do wonder sometimes who the publisher organisations are working for. Or perhaps they are just embarrassed that Google are doing what the publishers should have done years ago?

In my opinion, a text that is not "in print" should be public domain.

Agreed.

But only *after* it's been published...

Quoting: I really do wonder sometimes who the publisher organizations are working for. Or perhaps they are just embarrassed that Google are doing what the publishers should have done years ago?

Well, it would appear that the majority of published authors don't feel that the "Authors Guild" represents them (at least not on matters pertaining to copyright). It's sort of like the similar music industry associations; there's a few high-profile supporters, but how well they actually represent the interests of the typical individual artists, rather than the large industry corporate concerns, is a matter of considerable debate.