So the SCOTUS just ruled that Google can scan in books under 'fair use' clause. I guess that means we'll be able to read everything online for free? Or are they just scanning this stuff in for their search engine?
The Author's Guild, sort of a union for authors doesn't like it, they say
Blinded by the public benefit arguments, the Second Circuit’s ruling tells us that Google, not authors, deserves to profit from the digitization of their books… The price of this short-term public benefit may well be the future vitality of American culture.
The vituperative tone may cause eye-rolling in some who find the fair use case to be an obvious one, but Rasenberger does go on to make broader, more philosophical observations that are food for thought:
Authors are already among the most poorly paid workers in America; if tomorrow’s authors cannot make a living from their work, only the independently wealthy or the subsidized will be able to pursue a career in writing, and America’s intellectual and artistic soul will be impoverished.
The denial of review is further proof that we’re witnessing a vast redistribution of wealth from the creative sector to the tech sector, not only with books, but across the spectrum of the arts.
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/18/sup...-are-fair-use/
The 2013 decision found that the scanning of books (provided for that purpose by libraries) was not a violation of copyright, owing to its being “transformative” — in a technical sense. The books were not simply being resold or the like, but were being used for a new and creative purpose: a search engine for books that were frequently out of print or copyright. It doesn’t provide a “substitute” for the original work, and the court accepted Google’s argument that it was in fact doing a public service as well as providing authors with new audiences.
A Supreme Court order issued today closes the book on (or perhaps merely ends this chapter of) more than a decade of legal warfare between Google and the Authors Guild over the legality of the former’s scanning without permission of millions of copyrighted books. And the final word is: it’s fair use.