Brian is contesting Lawrence Lessig’s assertion that Google Book Search qualifies as “fair use” as defined by 17 USC 107.



Using 2 cases to illustrate his argument,Lessig said that the trasformation to the original piece results in a reduced version of the original and so there can be reasons for “fair use”.



Brian has pointed out that Google is not making thumbnails of books. It has taken detailed scan of the original works and it would be a fallacy to take them as reduced versions - where just snippets are availabale to browse.



One other thing:

First, if Google scans and processes a work without purchasing it, the company is indeed violating the author’s copyright.



But if Google purchases and retains the original work, then ?



I am sure Google wouldn’t be foolish to make the entire scanned versions of any work available to the the public.