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Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

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Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#21
post #9
post #4

As a former librarian I say YES! The typical librarian actually doesn't fight for the access of materials but fights to enforce copy right stricter than the copy right law even calls for. At my college I took down the sign that said "No Copying of Books" at the photo copier and I put in place the actual copy right law. I can't tell you how many visiting librarians were "shocked" I did that. Well we also allowed bottl…

Why does the typical librarian behave like that? I have noticed the same thing. Is it as simple as wanting to be in control over information, i.e. some small personal power?

Read my Lawsuit reply in this comment thread.

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#22
post #4

As a former librarian I say YES! The typical librarian actually doesn't fight for the access of materials but fights to enforce copy right stricter than the copy right law even calls for. At my college I took down the sign that said "No Copying of Books" at the photo copier and I put in place the actual copy right law. I can't tell you how many visiting librarians were "shocked" I did that. Well we also allowed bottl…

This is awesome. I can remember clearly, in junior high school, the librarian informing us that we were only allowed to copy six pages of a book for homework assignments. I don't really have a strong opinion on much of this (one way or the other), because I'm not well enough informed on the topic, but I remember feeling weird about it, becaus the library aid made us feel like criminals for wanting to copy more than 6…

Yeah, we were only allowed to use the first 30 seconds of songs in school projects. Presumably that rumor started because of iTunes (which is crazy of course because iTunes obviously negotiates extra rights that you and I don't have). Meanwhile we just had to cite where entire photos came from! I think it was just the recency of the music piracy issues that made them care.

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#23
Since when does the right of the owner shift to the consumer with respect to artistic creation? This sets off all kinds of red flags on all things created. The view is narrow, and lacks a broader view on the scope of artists in particular - namely photographers!

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#24
It's great that this may soon be resolved once and for all -- assuming the Supreme Court doesn't put the brakes on -- but it's nightmarish that it has been dragging on since, literally, 2005. We've got to find some way to speed the legal system up; that might make it so you don't have to be Google to win an important case, too.

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, thanks for being a librarian. Second, I don't think traditional librarians know how quickly the end is coming. Libraries will still exist of course, possibly as makerspaces, possibly as community centers, but with collections like "Library Genesis" [+] and storage continually to plummet in price, in the next 5 years entire libraries could be carried in your pocket. EDIT: I'm not saying librarians aren't necess…

A librarian's always been an adviser and guide. Curation is a huge part of what a librarian's task is. Librarians are also detectives, tasked with finding those obscure resources where you know of them, but not where to find them. There are times, for example, where one needs a specific edition of a book. A librarian would have a much better grasp of how to find that than a search engine. We've got the resources now…

> There are times, for example, where one needs a specific edition of a book. A librarian would have a much better grasp of how to find that than a search engine.

You know, I might have agreed with you before. But after watching the Vanity Fair interview with Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and Sam talking about how no one person really understands how Google's first page results are created anymore, or how machine learning is matching people on dating sites (and those people are having babies, determined by machine learning), I think we're approaching an inflection point where algorithms will be able to provide that guidance.

We're not there yet, I agree with that. But we're closing fast on that future.

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#26

Ok this is pretty cool, I've been waiting for the 2nd Circuit to decide this. Now to see if the Supreme Court will take it up. I believe that this would also clear up a service that scans your books and sends you the digitized version. That would seem to be fair use of my own library as well. I spent about $1200 getting roughly a 1/3 of the volumes I've collected over the years digitized at 600 DPI so that I could ha…

May I ask where you scanned your books? I've used 1dollarscan.com before for some book scans, which worked pretty well.

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#28
>Google has scanned more than 20 million books since 2004 without the permission of the authors.

I am blown away how this is ruled legal, but in many cases scanning books as an individual is considered copyright infringement. As though they don't reap financial benefit from expanding the scope of the data they control? It's their entire business model...

Re: Google Wins Appeals Court Approval of Book-Scanning Project

#30
post #4

As a former librarian I say YES! The typical librarian actually doesn't fight for the access of materials but fights to enforce copy right stricter than the copy right law even calls for. At my college I took down the sign that said "No Copying of Books" at the photo copier and I put in place the actual copy right law. I can't tell you how many visiting librarians were "shocked" I did that. Well we also allowed bottl…

This is awesome. I can remember clearly, in junior high school, the librarian informing us that we were only allowed to copy six pages of a book for homework assignments. I don't really have a strong opinion on much of this (one way or the other), because I'm not well enough informed on the topic, but I remember feeling weird about it, becaus the library aid made us feel like criminals for wanting to copy more than 6…

I felt that way too, they always felt like a quiet retreat from anything you may be experiencing in life really. It was always so calm and peaceful in there. Never anything offensive to the senses going on. Finding that place in the back corner where there wasn't any foot traffic and getting lost in a book was possibly one of the best things I remember about childhood. It was also one of the few things you can do without needing any money.

Knowing all the different information that could be hidden inside these walls of books that I was surrounded by that might be interesting to me was also something special. You can get that with the internet but there's really no visual, material feeling you get actually seeing the amount of things you can learn about.

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