Publishers Go After Google

Note: In the interest of full disclosure, while I report this, I have also been under contract at one time or another (and in two cases - currently) with every publishing unit part of this suit short of Penguin which is a division of a major publisher I have written for.

From CNN:

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Five major publishers filed suit against Google Inc. in Manhattan's federal court on Wednesday seeking to block plans to scan copyrighted works without permission.

The complaint lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Google names as plaintiffs McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc., Pearson Plc's Pearson Education and Penguin Group (USA) units, Viacom Inc.'s Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons Inc.

The suit seeks a declaration that the Web search leader commits infringement when it scans entire books covered by copyright without permission of the copyright owner.

As a writer, I have to depend to a degree on the copyright for my survival. I'll also tell you that I have NEVER successfully collected any remedy for copyright infringement because most of mine - to my knowledge - occurs outside the US limits (I'm a hit in some countries where my articles and a short book have appeared under someone else's name without my permission).

Realistically, however, the changes in the Millennium Copyright Act, often sets me as principle creator of a work to have far less rights as an individual than the major media companies enjoy under "individual" status.

Then tack onto that fact that the "rights" of a corporation to be protected as individuals under constitutional law is commonly believed to be a deliberate misinterpretation by a judge's clerk that has stood lo these many, many, corporate profitable, politician-contributing years. Thom Hartmann's a good source on this legal point.

Finally, I have mixed feelings about this Google plan. On the one hand, you might have something of a reconstruction of the Great Library of Alexandria - and let us not forget it was destroyed by Christians threatened by knowledge - that would be fairly difficult to sack. On the other? Where do the lines of ownership, domain, and private work get drawn?