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Capping off a lawsuit running since 2005, the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York today
granted summary judgment to Google  to end the case
of Authors Guild v. Google.

Choice excerpt from the decision:

by helping readers and researchers identify books, Google
Books benefits authors and publishers. When a user clicks on a
search result and is directed to an “About the Book” page, the page
will offer links to sellers of the book and/or libraries listing
the book as part of their collections…..The About the Book page
for Ball Four [whose author is one of the parties suing Google
Books], for example,provides links to Amazon.com,
Barnes&Noble.com, Books-A-Million, and
IndieBound….

A user could simply click on any of these links to be
directed to a website where she could purchase the book. Hence,
Google Books will generate new audiences and create new sources of
income. As amici observe: “Thanks to . . . [Google Books],
librarians can identify and efficiently sift through possible
research sources, amateur historians have access to a wealth of
previously obscure material, and everyday readers and researchers
can find books that were once buried in research library
archives.”

The full decision in Author’s Guild v.
Google as a whole gives a pretty good mini history of
Google’s book scanning projects and a good defense of its many uses
to literary and scholarly achievements and culture. But the legal
nub of why Judge Denny Chin decided the authors can go pound sand
and Google triumphs is:

I assume that plaintiffs have established a prima facie
case of copyright infringement against Google…Google has
digitally reproduced millions of copyrighted books, including the
individual plaintiffs’ books, maintaining copies for itself on its
servers and backup tapes…..Google has made digital copies
available for its Library Project partners to download…..Google
has displayed snippets from the books to the public….Google has
done all of this, with respect to in-copyright books in the Library
Project, without license or permission from the copyright owners.
The sole issue now before the Court is whether Google’s use of the
copyrighted works is “fair use” under the copyright laws. For the
reasons set forth below, I conclude that it is.

The Judge then breaks down the four factors usually
considered in “fair use” determinations and finds Google wins.
(This excerpt doesn’t deal with all four points):

The use of book text to facilitate search through the
display of snippets is transformative….to a broad selection of
books. Similarly, Google Books is also transformative in the
sense that it has transformed book text into data for purposes of
substantive research, including data mining and text mining in new
areas, thereby opening up new fields of research. Words in books
are being used in a way they have not been used before. Google
Books has created something new in the use of book text….Google
Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool
to be used to read books. Instead, it “adds value to the original”
and allows for “the creation of new information, new aesthetics,
new insights and understandings.”…

Google does not sell the scans it has made of books for
Google Books; it does not sell the snippets that it displays; and
it does not run ads on the About the Book pages that contain
snippets. It does not engage in the direct commercialization of
copyrighted works…Accordingly, I conclude that the first factor
[basically, is the use transformative?] strongly favors a finding
of fair use.

And the Judge thinks Google Books isn’t hurting the book
sales business:

plaintiffs argue that Google Books will negatively impact
the market for books and that Google’s scans will serve as a
“market replacement” for books…..It also argues that users could
put in multiple searches,varying slightly the search terms, to
access an entire book….Neither suggestion makes sense. Google
does not sell its scans, and the scans do not replace the books.
While partner libraries have the ability to download a scan of a
book from their collections, they owned the books already — they
provided the original book to Google to scan. Nor is it likely that
someone would take the time and energy to input countless searches
to try and get enough snippets to comprise an entire book. Not only
is that not possible as certain pages and snippets are blacklisted,
the individual would have to have a copy of the book in his
possession already to be able to piece the different snippets
together in coherent fashion….

a reasonable fact finder could only find that Google Books
enhances the sales of books to the benefit of copyright holders. An
important factor in the success of an individual title is whether
it is discovered — whether potential readers learn of its
existence….Google Books provides a way for authors’ works to
become noticed, much like traditional in-store book
displays….Indeed, both librarians and their patrons use Google
Books to identify books to purchase…..Many authors have noted
that online browsing in general and Google Books in particular
helps readers find their work, thus increasing their
audiences. Further, Google provides convenient links to
booksellers to make it easy for a reader to order a book. In this
day and age of on-line shopping, there can be no doubt but
that Google Books improves books sales…..

Google Books provides significant public benefits. It
advances the progress of the arts and
sciences, while maintaining respectful
consideration for the rights of authors and other
creative individuals, and without
adversely impacting the rights of copyright
holders. It has become an invaluable research
tool that permits students, teachers, librarians,
and others to more efficiently identify and
locate books. It has given scholars the ability,
for the first time, to conduct full-text searches
of tens of millions of books. It preserves books,
in particular out-of-print and old books
that have been forgotten in the bowels of
libraries, and it gives them new life. It
facilitates access to books for print-disabled
and remote or underserved populations. It
generates new audiences and creates new sources
of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all
society benefits.

It’s a court decision so there are lots of interesting
complications in the whole thing, but that’s the jist. Google Books
as it stands can keep on truckin’ without compensating authors.

Capping off a lawsuit running since 2005, the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York today
granted summary judgment to Google  to end the case
of Authors Guild v. Google.

Choice excerpt from the decision:

by helping readers and researchers identify books, Google
Books benefits authors and publishers. When a user clicks on a
search result and is directed to an “About the Book” page, the page
will offer links to sellers of the book and/or libraries listing
the book as part of their collections…..The About the Book page
for Ball Four [whose author is one of the parties suing Google
Books], for example,provides links to Amazon.com,
Barnes&Noble.com, Books-A-Million, and
IndieBound….

A user could simply click on any of these links to be
directed to a website where she could purchase the book. Hence,
Google Books will generate new audiences and create new sources of
income. As amici observe: “Thanks to . . . [Google Books],
librarians can identify and efficiently sift through possible
research sources, amateur historians have access to a wealth of
previously obscure material, and everyday readers and researchers
can find books that were once buried in research library
archives.”

The full decision in Author’s Guild v.
Google as a whole gives a pretty good mini history of
Google’s book scanning projects and a good defense of its many uses
to literary and scholarly achievements and culture. But the legal
nub of why Judge Denny Chin decided the authors can go pound sand
and Google triumphs is:

I assume that plaintiffs have established a prima facie
case of copyright infringement against Google…Google has
digitally reproduced millions of copyrighted books, including the
individual plaintiffs’ books, maintaining copies for itself on its
servers and backup tapes…..Google has made digital copies
available for its Library Project partners to download…..Google
has displayed snippets from the books to the public….Google has
done all of this, with respect to in-copyright books in the Library
Project, without license or permission from the copyright owners.
The sole issue now before the Court is whether Google’s use of the
copyrighted works is “fair use” under the copyright laws. For the
reasons set forth below, I conclude that it is.

The Judge then breaks down the four factors usually
considered in “fair use” determinations and finds Google wins.
(This excerpt doesn’t deal with all four points):

The use of book text to facilitate search through the
display of snippets is transformative….to a broad selection of
books. Similarly, Google Books is also transformative in the
sense that it has transformed book text into data for purposes of
substantive research, including data mining and text mining in new
areas, thereby opening up new fields of research. Words in books
are being used in a way they have not been used before. Google
Books has created something new in the use of book text….Google
Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool
to be used to read books. Instead, it “adds value to the original”
and allows for “the creation of new information, new aesthetics,
new insights and understandings.”…

Google does not sell the scans it has made of books for
Google Books; it does not sell the snippets that it displays; and
it does not run ads on the About the Book pages that contain
snippets. It does not engage in the direct commercialization of
copyrighted works…Accordingly, I conclude that the first factor
[basically, is the use transformative?] strongly favors a finding
of fair use.

And the Judge thinks Google Books isn’t hurting the book
sales business:

plaintiffs argue that Google Books will negatively impact
the market for books and that Google’s scans will serve as a
“market replacement” for books…..It also argues that users could
put in multiple searches,varying slightly the search terms, to
access an entire book….Neither suggestion makes sense. Google
does not sell its scans, and the scans do not replace the books.
While partner libraries have the ability to download a scan of a
book from their collections, they owned the books already — they
provided the original book to Google to scan. Nor is it likely that
someone would take the time and energy to input countless searches
to try and get enough snippets to comprise an entire book. Not only
is that not possible as certain pages and snippets are blacklisted,
the individual would have to have a copy of the book in his
possession already to be able to piece the different snippets
together in coherent fashion….

a reasonable fact finder could only find that Google Books
enhances the sales of books to the benefit of copyright holders. An
important factor in the success of an individual title is whether
it is discovered — whether potential readers learn of its
existence….Google Books provides a way for authors’ works to
become noticed, much like traditional in-store book
displays….Indeed, both librarians and their patrons use Google
Books to identify books to purchase…..Many authors have noted
that online browsing in general and Google Books in particular
helps readers find their work, thus increasing their
audiences. Further, Google provides convenient links to
booksellers to make it easy for a reader to order a book. In this
day and age of on-line shopping, there can be no doubt but
that Google Books improves books sales…..

Google Books provides significant public benefits. It
advances the progress of the arts and
sciences, while maintaining respectful
consideration for the rights of authors and other
creative individuals, and without
adversely impacting the rights of copyright
holders. It has become an invaluable research
tool that permits students, teachers, librarians,
and others to more efficiently identify and
locate books. It has given scholars the ability,
for the first time, to conduct full-text searches
of tens of millions of books. It preserves books,
in particular out-of-print and old books
that have been forgotten in the bowels of
libraries, and it gives them new life. It
facilitates access to books for print-disabled
and remote or underserved populations. It
generates new audiences and creates new sources
of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all
society benefits.

It’s a court decision so there are lots of interesting
complications in the whole thing, but that’s the jist. Google Books
as it stands can keep on truckin’ without compensating authors.

Earlier this month, four prominent climate
change activists sent an
open letter to their fellow environmentalists urging them to
drop their opposition to nuclear power as a zero-carbon energy
source. The response was, to say the least, pusillanimous. Ted
Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, founders of the pro-progress*
Breakthrough Institute, have now called out in a great column,
“The
Great Green Meltdown,” the nuclear naysayers among the
“mainstream” environmentalist groups for their casuistical
rejection of this climate-friendly energy source:

Nuclear energy today is broadly recognized by scientists,
scholars, and analysts as an environmentally positive technology
with risks, such as they are, overwhelmingly outweighed by its
environmental benefits. Such is the consensus on this question that
mainstream environmental leaders no longer attempt to contest
it.

And so, in response to the letter from climate scientists, and
the
airing of Pandora’s Promise on CNN, the NRDC and CAP
led a chorus of green spokespersons claiming that their
opposition to nuclear was based not on environmental but rather
economic grounds.

“What’s weird is that the environmental movement is being held
up as an obstacle,” green jobs advocate Van Jones told Wolf
Blitzer. “Don’t blame us! Nuclear power is incredibly
expensive.”
NRDC’s Dale Bryk told a CNN audience that the reason the United
States wasn’t building nuclear was because “the market is not
choosing nuclear.” Her colleagues, Ralph Cavanagh and Tom
Cochran wrote
at CNN.com, “No American utility today would consider
building a new nuclear power plant without massive
government support.”

But rather than obscure the dogmatism that underlies green
opposition to nuclear energy, the economic arguments further
revealed it. Having demanded policies to make energy
more expensive, whether cap and trade or carbon taxes, greens now
complain that nuclear energy is too expensive. Having spent
decades advocating heavy subsidies for renewable energy, greens
claim that we should turn away from nuclear energy because it
requires subsidies. (emphasis added) And having spent the
last decade describing global warming as the greatest market
failure in human history, greens tell us that, in fact, we should
trust the market to decide what kind of energy system we
should have. 

It was hard, at times, to tell whether the claims made about
renewables in particular were purely cynical or just delusional.
The Sierra Club’s
Brune claimed that declining US emissions over the last five
years had been achieved thanks to wind and solar, a claim
that has no plausible basis in fact. US emissions are down
thanks to cheap gas, not renewables. Indeed, since the last US
nuclear plant came on line in 1997, nuclear has avoided more
emissions through simply increasing energy generation
from existing nuclear plants than have been avoided by
wind and solar power combined.

If an environmentlist is not in favor of nuclear power
(preferably liquid thorium reactors), then he or she is simply not
serious about halting any man-made global warming.

The whole column is worth your time.

*Noted because so many modern “progressives” actually oppose
technological progress.

No issue in
recent years has polarized Americans as much as Obamacare. It
produced a party-line vote in Congress, a near-fatal court battle,
a revolt by states that refused to run exchanges or expand
Medicaid, dozens of House votes to repeal it and, now, a bungled
launch that could be its undoing. It’s a barroom brawl that never
ends. Steve Chapman says that it didn’t have to be this way,
pointing to examples of other once-controversial issues solved by
federalism.

View this article.

It’s hard not to wonder whether the
interest by some senators to bring fear mongering on Iran back to
the forefront of Washington’s agenda is related to what a shit job
that body’s done on everything from developing a federal budget to
passing the mess that Obamacare has revealed itself to be as is in
the first place. It’s certainly also possible that Secretary of
State John Kerry is so far down the rabbit hole of “the White House
is never wrong” that he can’t make a credible argument in favor of
an Administration policy even when that policy is sound.

Whatever the case, John Kerry was apparently not successful in
convincing Senate hawks that renewing sanctions while negotiations
with Iran have not yet collapsed is a bad idea. In fact,
Republicans
reportedly stormed out of yesterday’s briefing while Democrats
didn’t want to comment.
Via Foreign Policy:

“It was solely an emotional appeal,” Sen. Bob Corker
(R-TN) told reporters after the briefing. “I am stunned that in a
classified setting, when you’re trying to talk with the very folks
that would be originating legislation relative to sanctions, there
would be such a lack of specificity.”

“Today is the day in which I witnessed the future of nuclear war in
the Middle East,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), a staunch Iran hawk.
“This administration, like Neville Chamberlain, is yielding large
and bloody conflict in the Middle East involving Iranian nuclear
weapons.” Kirk added that he felt the briefing was
“anti-Israeli.”

The vituperative GOP response was matched by relative silence by
exiting Democrats.

“I’m not gonna comment,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

“No comment,” said Tim Johnson (D-SD), the chairman of the Senate
Banking Committee.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) declined to answer questions about sanctions
as he ascended a congressional escalator. 

“Was this a helpful briefing?” asked The Cable.

“Yes. Very helpful,” said Reid.

When asked how so, Reid did not elaborate.

Corker, Kirk and the rest can read a case against new Iran
sanctions not rooted on emotional appeal
here. John Kerry’s welcome to lift from it, no footnotes
necessary.

They can all also read more Reason commentary on Iran here.

Ronald Phillips was supposed to
die today in Ohio, sentenced to be executed for raping and killing
a 3-year-old girl. He made an unexpected last-minute request: to

donate his organs after execution. His attorney said in a
letter that it wasn’t a delaying tactic but an attempt to “do a
charitable act,” reported the Associated Press. Phillips’ own
mother could be a potential beneficiary of such charity. She is on
dialysis for kidney disease.

Prison officials initially rejected the request because it was
made so late they couldn’t accommodate him. But Ohio Gov. John
Kasich announced that the state will delay the execution until July
in order to determine if organ donation is a possibility. The
Columbus Dispatch
reported:

Kasich’s action is unprecedented in the nation in the case of an
imminent execution, a death-penalty expert said.

The Republican governor said he halted Phillips’ execution “so
that medical experts can assess whether Phillips’ nonvital organs
or tissues can be donated to his mother or possibly others.”

“Ronald Phillips committed a heinous crime for which he will
face the death penalty,” Kasich said in a statement less than 18
hours before the condemned man was to be lethally injected using
two drugs never before used in combination. “I realize this is a
bit of uncharted territory for Ohio, but if another life can be
saved by his willingness to donate his organs and tissues, then we
should allow for that to happen.”

The governor said if Phillips “is found to be a viable donor to
his mother or possibly others awaiting transplants of nonvital
organs, such as kidneys, the procedures would be performed and then
he would be returned to Death Row to await his new execution
date.”

A commenter at the Dispatch noted the connection
between what may happen to Phillips and the “Known Space” sci-fi
works of author Larry Niven, where the Earth’s government used
condemned criminals for organ replacements, ultimately leading to a
repressive society where every crime was made a capital crime (for
the sake of my future as a presidential candidate, I haven’t read
these works myself and am taking the explanation from Wikipedia).

Fortunately, given where real science is actually heading with

bioengineering and 3D-printing new body parts, we won’t likely
be descending into Niven’s scenario.

More Reason on organ donations, and the restrictive regulations
that result in a governor hoping to get a condemned man’s kidneys,
here.

Transportation Security
Administration agents aren’t so good as they might claim at honing
their spidey senses to detect would-de doers of evil deeds. And
they’re persistently not good, expending time and
money—lots of money—on a behavioral indicators program that has
never shown much promise for heading off terrorists. That’s the
word from just the latest Government Accountability Office report
to give a big bronx cheer to the Screening of Passengers by
Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, which the TSA has pursued in
the total absence of any promising evidence of success, or even of
a decent plan for gathering such evidence, in its quest for a
magical way to do its job. Just stop, says the GAO.

In TSA
Should Limit Future Funding for Behavior Detection
Activities (PDF), the authors write:

Available evidence does not support whether behavioral
indicators, which are used in the Transportation Security
Administration’s (TSA) Screening of Passengers by Observation
Techniques (SPOT) program, can be used to identify persons who may
pose a risk to aviation security. GAO reviewed four meta-analyses
(reviews that analyze other studies and synthesize their findings)
that included over 400 studies from the past 60 years and found
that the human ability to accurately identify deceptive behavior
based on behavioral indicators is the same as or slightly better
than chance. Further, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS)
April 2011 study conducted to validate SPOT’s behavioral indicators
did not demonstrate their effectiveness because of study
limitations, including the use of unreliable data.

Translation: Not only has the TSA offered no evidence that this
approach works, nobody has ever found any support for the
idea.

So, what should the folks tasked with poking and prodding us at
the nation’s airports, all for our own good, we’re told, do?

Until TSA can provide scientifically validated evidence
demonstrating that behavioral indicators can be used to identify
passengers who may pose a threat to aviation security, the agency
risks funding activities that have not been determined to be
effective.

That’s sad news for the roughly 3,000 behavior detection
officers the TSA deploys at airports around the United States to
engage in what the GAO concludes is essentially voodoo. That’s
voodoo at an annual cost of about $200 million, and a cost to date
of $900 million since 2007.

Note that this is not the first time the GAO has called out the
TSA for putting lots of resources into unproven behavior detection
schemes. Reports in
2010 and 2012 also slammed the uniformed crotch-fondlers for
deploying SPOT “without first validating the scientific basis for
identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment.”

The earlier GAO reports also took the TSA to task for not
investigating the reliability of other programs, such as biometric
identification cards for controlling access to sensitive port
facilities, and for purchasing expensive equipment and then leaving
it to gather dust.

But the TSA has mastered sullen groping, as we all
know.

How many U.S. citizens end up pleading guilty in
a courtroom each year without ever getting access to an attorney?
In which counties are pre-trial detainees least likely to obtain
release through bail? Greg Beato suggests that instead of spying on
us, the government use its technological power to data-driven
oversight to the nation’s halls of justice.

View this article.

“Give Us Cash or Lose Your Kids and Face Felony Charges: Don’t
Cops Have Better Things to Do?!” is the latest video from ReasonTV.
Watch above or click on the link below for video, full text,
supporting links, downloadable versions, and more Reason TV
clips.

View this article.

This evening I’m going to be moderating a talk by Paul Cantor at
George Mason University. The topic is “The
Economics of Apocalypse: Flying Saucers, Alien Invasions, and the
Walking Dead.”

Everywhere we look in pop culture today, the world is
coming to an end. Whether it’s the result of natural disasters,
alien invasions, or zombie plagues, our way of life is threatened
and our institutions are crumbling, leaving Americans to fend for
themselves (or prey upon each other).

Drawing upon his new book, The
Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in
American Film and TV, University of Virginia Professor of
English Paul Cantor will discuss opposing visions of individualism
vs. collectivism in today’s catastrophe narratives.

The event will begin at 7 and end at 8:30. You can find us at
Founders Hall Auditorium on GMU’s Arlington campus, at 3351 Fairfax
Drive.