互联网与文化theatlantic.com
Google Books 的悲剧（2017）
The Tragedy of Google Books (2017)
2017 — 2024，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
《大西洋月刊》2017 年的文章回顾了 Google Books 项目从雄心勃勃的“扫描全球所有图书”愿景，到与作家协会的十年版权诉讼，最终以“合理使用”胜诉但项目本身停滞的历程。文章探讨了版权制度、合理使用判例以及这一未能完全实现的数字化图书馆梦想留下的遗憾。
为什么经久不衰：它记录了互联网时代最大规模知识开放尝试的兴衰，涉及版权与公共利益的经典张力，至今仍是讨论 AI 时代扫描与合理使用问题的重要参照。
HN 评论精选
判决细节出人意料：市场损害被认定可忽略，元数据不受作者控制，但该判例未来可能被推翻。
我最近在深挖版权、合理使用和 Google Books 和解协议。这篇文章是很好的总结，但文中链接的 2003 年法学评论文章几乎读不下去，不如直接看法律意见书和诉状。作家协会对最终判决目瞪口呆，我也是。也许最高法院拒绝受理此案是对的，好让问题沉淀一下，但感觉这个判决很可能在不久的将来被推翻。判决中有几个有趣的点：1) 法官认定对图书市场的损害微不足道，或被“转换性使用”的目的所抵消——这很出人意料，因为多数合理使用案例都涉及某种新的创造性表达；2) Google Books 被判合理使用，部分原因是图书描述（和摘要片段？）属于描述图书的元数据，这类信息不应由作者控制。
gridit查看英文原文
I have been going down the rabbit hole of copyright, fair use, and the Google Books Settlement recently. This article is a great summary including a lot of the peripheral issues, but the "2003 law review article" linked in TFA is nigh unreadable to me, compared to the actual legal opinions and briefs[0]. They are a couple of fascinating documents. The Authors Guild seems gobsmacked by the final ruling, and so am I. Perhaps the SCOTUS was correct to turn down hearing the case, if only to let the issue settle a little more, but it really feels like it's likely to be overturned in the near future. There are some interesting tidbits in the opinions: 1) In the definitive ruling, the judge decides that the harm done to the market for the books is negligible, or overcome by the transformative "purpose" of the the usage ("purpose" is significant because most examples of fair use include some type of new creative "expression"). This is surprising to me. 2) Google Books is ruled fair use in part because the book descriptions (and snippets?) are metadata describing the books, information that should not be controlled by the authors. [0] http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/authors-guild-v-google-inc/
超长版权期限并非单纯源于迪士尼游说，而是欧洲“作者权利”传统与美国宪法初衷的分歧。
文章中一个有趣的细节是关于版权期限的讨论。通常的看法是，如今（我认为过长的）版权期限是迪士尼等媒体公司游说的结果。文章则指出，这其实源自欧洲，源于一种与美国宪法截然不同的版权观。维基百科对此也有不错的讨论。所以当人们说现行版权法远超“促进科学和实用技艺进步”的初衷时，他们完全正确——但欧洲大陆的版权法更侧重于保护作者的权利。
ghaff查看英文原文
One of the interesting tidbits in the article is the discussion about the length of copyright terms. The common wisdom is that the current (too long IMO) terms are the result of lobbying by Disney and other media companies. The article goes into how, in fact, this really came out of Europe and a fundamentally different perspective on the purpose of copyright than the US Constitution. Wikipedia also has what seems to be a pretty good discussion.[1] So when people say that current copyright law goes way beyond "promote the progress of science and useful arts" they're absolutely right. But copyright law in continental Europe was much more focused on protecting the rights of authors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
全文开放虽未实现，但全文检索能力已是公众获得的最大红利。
可惜文章开头描绘的愿景（所有图书馆都能获取全文）没有实现。但公众确实从该项目获得了最重要的好处：检索这些书籍的能力。我最近在研究一个科学史课题，从 Google Books 获取的信息量惊人，其他网络渠道都找不到。当摘要片段不够时，我有书名和作者名，知道该去哪里找纸质书。
jkn查看英文原文
It's too bad the vision depicted at the beginning of the article (full texts potentially available in all libraries), didn't come true. But I feel that the public did get the most important benefit from the project: the ability to search these books. I've been researching a history of science subject recently and it's amazing the amount of information I could get from Google Books and nowhere else online. And where the snippets are not enough, I have the book title and author name, so I know where to look for the information in print.
真正有价值的知识仍被锁在书籍和期刊中，知识民主化的梦想远未实现。
想象一个求知欲强但贫穷的高中生：买不起期刊文章和书籍，几乎没有途径获取严肃优质的信息。这种悲剧浪费了多少潜力？我们远远没有实现互联网和知识民主化的潜力与梦想，而现状已成常态，很少有人注意到或意识到自己错过了什么。真正有价值的知识在很大程度上仍对世界上绝大多数人不可得——它们在书籍和学术期刊里。技术上，书籍和期刊完全可以人人可及，带来知识的爆发以及知识所驱动的一切——启蒙、科学、技术、民主、自由、繁荣。但大多数人只能得到残渣，互联网没有带来知识爆发，反而制造了错误信息和宣传的瘟疫。
hackuser查看英文原文
Imagine an intellectually curious but poor high schooler: They can't afford to buy journal articles and books; they have almost no option to access serious, quality information. How much potential is lost to this travesty? We've fallen far, far short of the potential and dream of the Internet and the democratization of knowledge, and the state of things has become a norm; few even notice it or realize what they are missing. The truly valuable knowledge, to a great extent, still is inaccessible to the vast majority of the world. It is in books and academic journals. As a simple example beyond Google Books, I was thinking the other day that Safari Books by itself contains much more valuable knowledge (and far less misinformation) on many technical issues than the rest of the Internet; I learn more about some topics in a few hours on Safari Books than in a year on the Internet. Technically, books and journals easily could be made universally accessible, creating an explosion of knowledge and all the things knowledge enables and motivates - the Enlightenment, science, technology, democracy, liberty, prosperity, most of modern civilization, etc. Instead of being well-informed, most of humanity is left with the dregs, and instead of the Internet providing an explosion of knowledge it has created a plague of misinformation and propaganda. IMHO the lack of high quality knowledge also robs the public of the ability to discriminate between good and bad information: Most lack a model of what quality knowledge is, of even the questions to ask (something encountered frequently in serious scholarship). Few even realize the vast gulf between the quality of generally available information and what is in the books and journals. (I'll add that the demise of bookstores means few even see or are aware that the books exist.) And even if they know, it's inaccessible. Instead of embracing a technological revolution in the distribution of information - a turning point in the history of humanity - we have brought forward the model used for the old technology, with distribution as controlled and limited as the old medium of paper. For the most part, it seems like the same few people have the quality information, the professional scholars. Let's not forget and give up; it's too important.
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