Might or might not be offtopic:
1. Plaintiffs are published authors and The Authors Guild, the nation's
largest organization of book authors, which has as its primary purpose to
advocate for and support the copyright and contractual interests of
published writers. The authors' works are contained in certain public and
university libraries, and have not been licensed for commercial use.
2. Defendant Google Inc. (.Google.) owns and operates a major Internet
search engine that, among other things, provides access to commercial and
other sites on the Internet. Google has contracted with several public and
university libraries to create digital "archives" of the libraries'
collections of books, including that of the University of Michigan
library. As part of the consideration for creating digital copies of these
collections, the agreement entitles Google to reproduce and retain for its
own commercial use a digital copy of the libraries' archives.
http://wendy.seltzer.org/media/AuthorsGuild-v-Google.pdf
I wonder what this will do for you ISP guys out there that use Cache
servers. Technically if the suit holds, your company too would be
violating laws. Which makes me wonder... If I listened to say a streaming
audio clip of an unreleased album... That album goes to my computer's
cache, can I be sued if I turn around and sell my cache. 
It will have zero impact on people running caching servers...
Please see points 2 through 5 in the nature of the action.
Specifically, "Google knew or should have known... to obtain
authorization from the holders of the copyrights in these literary
works before creating and reproducing digital copies of the Works for
its own commercial use..."
Somewhere, there's a shepard listening for your cries of "Wolf..."
-doug
IANAL, but surely the public and university libraries are equally at fault
for contracting to make available the books if, in doing so, they'd be
causing a copyright infringement?
Simon
On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 20:28:09 +0100, Simon Lockhart proclaimed...
IANAL, but surely the public and university libraries are equally at fault
for contracting to make available the books if, in doing so, they'd be
causing a copyright infringement?
IANAMLM*, but is this really on-topic?
* - I am not a mailing list moderator.
# 29 says Google plans to make the texts searchable and only allow excerpts
to be viewed. This should be legal under
Fair Use doctrine. Some seem to assume the full text will be available, that
seems not the case:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/google-print-and-authors-guild.html
"Let's be clear: Google doesn't show even a single page to users who find
copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us
permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where
their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and
several links to online booksellers and libraries. Here's what an
in-copyright book scanned from a library looks like on Google Print"
James
Routing and Security Administrator
At the Santa Fe Office: Cyber Mesa Telecom
jamesh@cybermesa.com noc@cybermesa.com
http://www.cybermesa.com/ContactCM
(505) 795-7101
No.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000512----000-.html
17 USC 512(b)(1) specifically says:
(1) Limitation on liability.-- A service provider shall not be liable for
monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or
other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the
intermediate and temporary storage of material on a system or network
controlled or operated by or for the service provider in a case in which--
(A) the material is made available online by a person other than the service
provider;
(B) the material is transmitted from the person described in subparagraph (A)
through the system or network to a person other than the person described in
subparagraph (A) at the direction of that other person; and
(C) the storage is carried out through an automatic technical process for the
purpose of making the material available to users of the system or network who,
after the material is transmitted as described in subparagraph (B), request
access to the material from the person described in subparagraph (A),
Yes, but that's not the point of the lawsuit. The point seems to be that
Google should not receive advertising revenue by creating a searchable archive
of copyrighted material owned by other parties. While I believe that such a
service will actually be to the benefit of the copyright owners, the
Plaintiffs have a valid point.
Certainly *I* would like a say in whether my material is used in such a matter
by others. Perhaps I believe that my material is so valuable that I could
create my own search engine for it, and thereby receive a revenue stream.
Copyright law is pretty clear that it's my exclusive right to do that.
In any case, as others have pointed out, ISP caching is normally immune, and
so this isn't really on topic anymore.