1: Google Book Search and Fair Use

The doubtful exercise here is the copyright complaint of the Authors' Guild against Google, about Google Book Search.

You shouldn't have any trouble finding the basic complaint and the Google response as briefs online. Please first try to find them yourselves so that I can find out how much detail I need to provide in these assignments. If that seems to be a problem, see
http://www.boingboing.net/images/AuthorsGuildGoogleComplaint1.pdf
and
http://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/law/357c/001/projects/jsieman/AGanswer.pdf
for the texts. You should also look for the decisions in Kelly v. Arriba Soft, Field v. Google, and Perfect 10 v. Google.

Also note two more general articles:
David Nimmer, "Fairest of Them All"
Barton Beebe, "An Empirical Study of the U. S. Copyright Fair Use Cases"
for additional opinions. And there is lots, lots more.

I will lengthen the requested essay so that you should address:

What are the legal arguments for each side?

What would happen if this case arose in Europe?

What would be the best policy for the country?

Can you think of another experiment to test any assertion in any of the arguments? This assignment is for the people born on odd-numbered days. Those waiting for the next assignment might prepare an intelligent question to ask in the discussion.

This probably will be revised after the first class session, so check back.