(this is a follow up to my entry on Google Print from last month.)
Lawrence Lessig has written an op-ed in the LA Times that takes some of the problems I pointed out with Google Print a step further. He suggests that Google is taking on a huge liability just by scanning books that are potentially under copyright. He writes:
"...for work not in the public domain, Google's right to scan — to copy — whole texts to index is uncertain at best, even if it ultimately makes only snippets available. When permission has been given by the copyright holder, again there's no problem. But when permission has not been secured, the law is essentially uncertain. If lawsuits were filed, and if Google and its partner libraries were found to have violated the law, their legal exposure could reach into the billions."
I wonder if the market has factored this into Google's impressive price.
I had assumed that if google was brought down, it would be by a
startup, not by a ravenous pack of intellectual property lawyers.
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