“The Web is always about copying, but copyright law is about making copying illegal”

Quoted by Peter Hirtle at
http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2009/11/gbs-a-legislative-solution.html

The opt-out method has worked well for web sites, and it would work well for books. Unfortunately, the plaintiffs in the Google case think otherwise.

A colleague has pointed out to me that Ken Auletta has an interesting quote on this in his new book, Googled (which I haven’t read yet). He reportedly says:

“If [Google] had had a copyright lawyer among their founders, they never would have started the company. The basic business of a search engine is to copy everything. To make your copy, and then search it. The first thing that happens, arguably, is infringement of copyright law. I say ‘arguably’ because there’s never been a case on it. From day one, Google went out and copied the whole Internet. Can you imagine a company starting in the film world and the first thing they did was make a copy of every film in existence? That company couldn’t have gotten started. The Web is always about copying, but copyright law is about making copying illegal.” (127)

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