Danny Sullivan on Google book-scanning

Danny Sullivan, Legal Experts Say Google Library Digitization Project Likely OK; Will It Revolve Around Snippets? Search Engine Watch, September 7, 2005. Excerpt:

Courts Unlikely To Stop Google Book Copying from InternetWeek has legal experts saying that copyright law over indexing books appears to be on Google's side....My favorite part:

"If copyright law worked the way Google would like to see it working, then everyone in the world would be able to use the material unless the copyright holder explicitly told them not to, and even then it would be OK," says Allan Adler, the vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers. "That would be a very strange copyright system."

As I've said before, that's exactly how things currently work with web indexing. The Association Of American Publishers doesn't appear to have minded Google indexing nearly 800 pages from the site over the years without permission, all of which have copyright protection. But books apparently are different....[S]ay I'm looking for a particular fact. I search for a book using Google Print. I find that there's a book that appears to match, but since the publisher hasn't given Google what I'd call "display" permission as opposed to "indexing" permission, I can't see the answer. Harm? Hard to show. Benefit? Easier to show. I didn't know this book might have an answer I needed. Now I do, and I might go get it.