google book search

There’s been some talk on and even lawsuits against the google book search and whether their use of copyrighted books constitutes fair use or not.

I think that it does. I’m not going make an argument in this blog post. Lawrence Lessig makes one in this video if your interested.

Here is a hypothetical example which i think is comparable. There is a town, and in that town there are alot of sights to be seen by tourists. Some of them are free, but some them can only be enjoyed by paying a fee, such as AquariWorld, an amusement park. I make my living by giving people tours around the town and telling them about the various sights, among those are AquariWorld. I show them some photos and tell them about the rides they can enjoy and the animals they have on display. You’ll note that I can’t give them the experience of actually being on the ride, but i can describe it to them and possibly they may want to take the ride.- Now AquariWorld sues me and says : “Hold on there sonny boy, you can’t just go telling people about our park and rides, that’s our property. If you wan’t to tell people about our park you must pay us.”

• I say : “You must be misunderstanding, i think that my services are within fair use. And why should i have to pay you since the only thing that can happen to you is that my customers may become your customers.”
• AquariWorld says : “i’m sorry but your services are not fair use because someday we could make a profit from providing a tour service like yours.”

I think intellectual property in the US is over-reaching and suggest authors, artists and other moderate people in this buisness reign in their laywers with some commons sense.