PulpLit.net

Lessig on Google Book Search and Fair Use

Lessig has created a great primer on the whole Google Print debate, available as a slideshow bittorrent file.

He argues clearly and powerfully. I went to a debate between Lessig and Jack Valenti back in 2001-ish; he's good, so very good.

My main counter argument would be that the big difference between the web and print books is that on the web people are basically giving implied permission to search engines and others to make a copy of their website. After all, the whole technology of the web cannot function without making a copy of what's being read; caches and such NEED to make a copy in order to work at all, at least in resident memory.

But, of course, books do not. Where one might have the right to make a digital copy of a book for one's one personal use, the book publisher certainly is not giving anyone the implied right to make a copy of the book just by printing it. Consumption of a book does NOT require making digital copy; if anything, many books explicitly deny people the right to do so.

Lessig's clarification regarding the tests of fair use are particularly good. His argument around the whole issue of a market failure regarding the scanning of out-of-print books is quite slick.

I wish I was more of an expert on these matters. It's easy to state why using a quote is so vital to discourse and democracy (without that use of fair use, how could we communicate?), but it's very hard to weight the public good (a digital index of all books) versus the incentive scheme which creates that cultural wealth (copyright law).