Google has decided to generously give book authors the chance to opt out of their "Google Print" program.
This has sparked some criticism from Aaron Swartz, who doesn't seem to believe in the right of copyright holders to control the indexing of their works.
In contrast, as I have said in a post a couple of hours ago, I think that the indexing right should be recognized just as the translation right. Building an index is a derivative work.
It would be nice if I could understand Googles "selling out the users to the publishers" (Swartz) as endorsing my theory.
However, that would probably be premature.
All they are doing is giving copyright holders the chance to opt out, while still asserting the right to go ahead indexing without clearing any rights if they don't hear any objections. That is exactly what they are doing with their main index of the Internet. Daniel Brandt at Google-Watch has more on this point.
Of course this is not compatible with my view that the index is a derivative work. In that case, they need to clear all rights before indexing.
Comparing the case of "Google Print" with the main Internet index, I think that the level of infringement is more serious with the main index. That displays the cache of all pages to users, while the "Google Print" project only displays a couple of lines.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at August 13, 2005 02:45 PM