tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post280839100151992595..comments2023-04-15T11:42:35.385-04:00Comments on Go To Hellman: Copyless Crowdscanning: How to Legally Index the World's BooksErichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-13642351490421299032010-02-07T11:35:17.201-05:002010-02-07T11:35:17.201-05:00Not spotting a trackback, so I'll point out yo...Not spotting a trackback, so I'll point out your more recent post on the subject: <a href="http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/02/copyright-safe-full-text-indexing-of.html" rel="nofollow">http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/02/copyright-safe-full-text-indexing-of.html</a>Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03710378225069336454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-3972385806979275422009-10-27T20:01:11.528-04:002009-10-27T20:01:11.528-04:00[And actually, Richard, fair use IS codified in la...[And actually, Richard, fair use IS codified in law -- in legislation even, which I think is what you meant. (lawyers consider judicial precedent to be 'law' too). It started out simply as case law, not as legislation, but Congress took what had become established as case law and put it in legislation in 1976. Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107. <br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_under_United_States_law<br /><br />Of course, many details and fine-tunings on top of that still exist in precedential case law, not in legislation]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-92101254357648271422009-10-27T19:57:49.458-04:002009-10-27T19:57:49.458-04:00"If there's no copying, how can copyright..."If there's no copying, how can copyright be relevant?"<br /><br />Well, there definitely IS copying. Whether you copy a page, or a sentence, or a word, or a letter, you're copying. It's just highly likely to be fair use if you only copy a sentence. But that doesn't mean when a million people each copy a sentence and put them together it's still just as likely not to be fair use. <br /><br />I haven't heard of anything in the law that distributing your copying amongst many people acting in a distributed fashion can make your copying non-infringing fair use. Can you find any legislation or precedent to that effect? You could try making the argument to a judge... but I wouldn't bet on the judge agreeing.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-69338846431461333132009-10-27T10:48:21.000-04:002009-10-27T10:48:21.000-04:00This is a brilliant technical thought experiment E...This is a brilliant technical thought experiment Eric. One hassle with the premise though, is that copying a sentence *is* prima facie infringement. However, having performed that illegal act, you can, in defense, say that it is fair use. So legally there isn't a distinction between your approach and Google's approach as both involve copying, and both have to invoke a fair use defense. You see, fair use is not codifed in law, it is what the lawyer call an affirmative defense, like, for example, self-defense in murder. So it isn't actually an ends and means thing, because the means in both instances, yours and Google's, are in fact considered illegal.Richard Nashhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05886541689307156853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-43018092421300152422009-10-25T23:00:42.247-04:002009-10-25T23:00:42.247-04:00Copyright lawyers who work with technical people h...Copyright lawyers who work with technical people have heard variations on this theme a million times. It is premised on a fundamental mistake: that judges are like computers, that they follow clear rules literally. They do not -- they are persuaded to interpret ambiguous rules to reach particular results. The boundaries within which the persuasion and interpretation occur are called "law." <br /><br />Here's another way to put it: this is no different from a lawyer thinking he can fix a bug on his computer by talking to it gently, flattering its pedigree, and deploying analogies to make it understand that the bug is unwise and illogical.fvlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01275601017570202502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-45504195141680038402009-10-23T21:27:52.803-04:002009-10-23T21:27:52.803-04:00bibwild- To some extent, I think it's a ends v...bibwild- To some extent, I think it's a ends vs. means thing. Although IANAL, I think Google's weakness in the book search lawsuit was less the legality of its ends (snippet display) than the legality of its means (making copies of lots of copyrighted books). The point of crowdscanning here is to avoid the copying. If there's no copying, how can copyright be relevant? I agree that crowd-sourcing sentences in a way that would allow reconstruction of full-text would still constitute copying.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-37595384555728800842009-10-23T20:51:00.145-04:002009-10-23T20:51:00.145-04:00If your service got popular enough to matter, publ...If your service got popular enough to matter, publishers probably WOULD take you to court. Whether they'd ultimately win or not, assuming you had the money to keep fighting it -- I don't think even an IP lawyer would be comfortable betting much either way. Your argument that this is obviously perfect legal is unlikely to be seen as so obvious to a judge. <br /><br />On the other hand, there is some settled case law that says showing thumbnail images in search results is generally fair use. Only using excerpts for context is probably more important than whether you copy the whole thing or crowd source sentances -- if you crowd sourced-sentances, but then DID reassemble them into full texts, I seriously doubt courts would find it much of a defense that any individual person only copied a sentence. The law doesn't always work out 'mathematically', what actually ends up happening matters too. <br /><br />And yeah, I think they DID sue Google even for just providing a search service with excerpts. But that case didn't come to trial, right, it settled. If it had... and then been appealed until it was done with that... it's hard to predict WHO would have won. <br /><br />Whether you like legal solutions or not, the law is pretty unsettled with this kind of stuff, if you want to start being able to make confident predictions about legality, there's gonna need to be some new law, by the courts or legislature.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-24382735178828892172009-10-23T19:36:51.906-04:002009-10-23T19:36:51.906-04:00now figure out a way to do it with
both hands tie...now figure out a way to do it with <br />both hands tied behind your back.<br /><br />that would make as much sense...<br /><br />if the law makes you act stupid,<br />change the stupid freaking law,<br />don't figure out how to be stupid.<br /><br />-bowerbirdbowerbirdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05962115094107919533noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-34360883038828833612009-10-23T19:18:21.376-04:002009-10-23T19:18:21.376-04:00Wes Felter- Worth linking that interesting article...Wes Felter- Worth linking that <a href="http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php" rel="nofollow">interesting article.</a>Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-64197226598496293302009-10-23T18:35:37.665-04:002009-10-23T18:35:37.665-04:00I encourage you to read this article about copyrig...I encourage you to read this article about copyright and data gymnastics:<br /><br />http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.phpWes Felterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01395217775195260835noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-4383924296555651542009-10-23T17:44:21.504-04:002009-10-23T17:44:21.504-04:00Robert Baruch- What you describe is not an index, ...Robert Baruch- What you describe is not an index, but an encoding. If it's possible to reconstruct the full text losslessly from the index, then it can serve as a copy. What I'm suggesting is that an index of the text can be built to preclude reconstruction, and thus cannot be considered a copy.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14172740163003223132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990922102626688253.post-47866558278877911562009-10-23T16:31:50.016-04:002009-10-23T16:31:50.016-04:00I like the idea, but let's get even more ridic...I like the idea, but let's get even more ridiculous. Suppose I had an index server where you could type in the name of a book, and it would return a webpage for each word in the book, in order, along with the information enabling locating that word in the web page.<br /><br />Then you wouldn't even have a sentence server -- in effect, the sentence server would be the Internet -- but the key here is the index server. It tells you the information you need to know to assemble a copy. This is somewhat different from, say, The Pirate Bay, which merely links to full copies. It is also different from GBS, which does not provide the full book, in any encoding, for in-copyright works.<br /><br />I think you'd have a hard time convincing any judge that the index server isn't providing an encoding of a copy of the data, and is merely pointing to tiny bits of the data. So... :(Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com