A blog post by Richard Charkin, Chairman of Macmillan UK, about he and a colleague “stealing” a couple of computers from the Google booth at BookExpo in order to make a point about Google’s placing snippets of books online makes me wonder how much he truly understands copyright.
Someone going into a bookstore and taking a book without paying for it is committing theft. Copyright infringement is not involved in the action of stealing the book. If a work is scanned and made available online without permission, it is copyright infringement, but not considered theft. The differences are significant, but seem to be confused by many. The chair of a major publisher should not confuse the two.
The copyright question surrounding Google Book Search involves whether Google has the right to scan and index entire books, and whether their providing snippets of the books via their search tool is considered Fair Use. These are questions that haven’t been settled yet, and very well may be decided in Google’s favor.
found via Open Access News
