MacMillian CEO Charkin Steals Google Laptops To “Prove” Book Scanning Point

Via Techdirt, Book publisher steals Google laptops from The Register covers the jaw-dropping action of Richard Charkin, CEO of Macmillian Publishing, stealing laptops from a Google booth at BookExpo America to try and prove a point about Google "stealing" books for its book search service. Blogged Charkin:

Our justification for this appalling piece of criminal behaviour? The owner of the computer had not specifically told us not to steal it. If s/he had, we would not have done so. When s/he asked for its return, we did so. It is exactly what Google expects publishers to expect and accept in respect to intellectual property.

As I’ve written before (see here, here and here), the legality of scanning in-copyright books without permission and presenting short summaries (rather than reprinting the actual books) remains very much in question. Some publishers say Google is stealing content; others disagree, including Google. That’s why we have on-going court cases to resolve the matter.

In contrast, there’s not a lot of fair use or intellectual property debate over taking a laptop that doesn’t belong to you.

A copyright statement does not give someone full rights to control content. It provides very specific rights, which are sometimes debated. While I’m not a lawyer, property law tends to be less debatable. If you don’t own the property, you don’t get to take it.

Perhaps Charkin can better understand the difference this way. Was it theft to read a book, then cite a short passage from it? Generally not. Was it theft to walk into a bookstore and physically take a book you didn’t buy? Yes.

FYI, Charkin’s blog lacks a robots.txt file, so I assume he has no problem with the thieving big G indexing all of his copyright-protected pages for the purposes of web search. To be consistent with his concerns over copyright, he really ought to put one up and block search engines from spidering his web site unless they call him up, send him an email, send him a letter or otherwise obtain his express permission.

Search Engines, Permissions & Moving Forward In Copyright Battles from me explains this issue in more depth. To be fair, I agree with Charkin that I’d like Google to stop scanning in-copyright books because unlike with web search, there’s no easy way to automatically ask for permission. But legally, the search engine might very well be found to be within fair use guidelines. Certainly the question is less clear-cut than stealing a laptop.