Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, it is as straightforward as all that. What's alleged is that someone searches for DenisM's book on Google, and when they click on one of the results, just that piece of data is forwarded to Microsoft. Not a scraping of all of Google's search results and nothing like the contents of the book. As to "the central idea of copyright", bear in mind that in addition to not being able to copyright ideas or data, th…
> nothing like the contents of the book. Explain this to me. In terms of raw bytes it's probably more data than every book that has ever been written. It was certainly more expensive to write than any particular book. What is the important difference here? To make it a little more concrete, suppose someone was doing the same thing with google's streetview data. Now, it's an empirical fact that if you go to such-and-s…
You're referring to the aggregate, so far as I know copyright law works on specific instances. Let's say the Kindle had a button that allowed you to isolate a couple of sentences and broadcast them to your friends on Facebook, or wherever. The small portion of the text being shared would fall under fair usage and not be a copyright infringement violation, even though the aggregate of all Kindle users might be large.
What is the important difference here?
I think the biggest difference between the two sides debating this issue is that one side thinks the amount of effort Google put into creating search results is a relevant concern, while my side thinks that once those results are shared with users Google's legal/moral claims to any ownership of that data evaporate.
The streetview point highlights the problem. If Google and I both take pictures of the Church of Mxyzptlk at 14th and Main, we both own copyright to our respective pictures. The fact that I created my picture after "piggybacking" off of a Google search for Mxyzptlk is irrelevant to copyright. So far as know (IANAL) the combination of a link with search terms is a utilitarian set of data rather than a creative expression and hence not copyrightable.