Google is Done Paying Silicon Valley's Legal Bills

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/further-thoughts-google-book-search-settlement

by peter123 • 18 years ago

46 31 18 years ago

eff.org

helveticaman• 18 years ago

$#%&.

peter1233• 18 years ago

don't be evil?

Zev• 18 years ago

Doesn't mean to be completely altruistic.

peter1233• 18 years ago

it's not about being altruistic.. but about standing up for principles instead of capitulating to legal extortions. Too often what's 'right' or 'wrong' is determined by legal budgets rather than merits of the arguments.

brentb• 18 years ago

this isn't evil. there's a very real chance that google will lose the suit if they take it all the way, so settling at least buys them the ability to go forward with their book indexing project and protects them from a potentially very large legal liability. it's not like google set out to strike an exclusive-right-to-copy deal.

jim-greer2• 18 years ago

Also it's worth mentioning that the plaintiffs are fearful of ending up with a bad precedent for their side, so they often settle on good terms for Google...

ryanwaggoner2• 18 years ago

I don't understand why this is any different than web search, which has repeatedly won in court. Can someone explain it to me?

AndrewWarner• 18 years ago

There is no incentive for Google to take cases all the way through the court system just so they could set a precedent that helps the rest of us.

There's actually a disincentive for them to do that since precedents could help their competition and court cases have unexpected consequences.

nebula• 18 years ago

There is no incentive for Google to take cases all the way through the court system just so they could set a precedent that helps the rest of us.

The article says that the proposed settlement over book indexing is for $125M. I have no idea if it costs that kind of money to obtain justice.

One thing made me very uncomfortable while reading the article:

the fact that one needs deep pockets to fight it out in the courts. When the amount of money one has significantly affects the outcome of a legal fight, what is the meaning of law? Isn't it how Microsoft gets away with pretty much anything?

jorgeortiz85• 18 years ago

This is pure linkbait.

What high-profile cases has Google won (not settled)? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

jim-greer2• 18 years ago

Most of the cases are important in setting precedents though the plaintiffs weren't big names like Viacom:

Perfect 10 v. Google - A porn site sued them over creating thumbnails of their images for image search. Google won, and set an important fair use precedent.

Geico v. Google - Geico sued over Google allowing competitors to buy keywords on Geico's trademark. Google won - this mostly affects keyword advertising.

Field v. Google - Writer sued Google for caching a page with his work. Google won.

There are others...

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

Little story about Henry Ford. Every grade school American History textbook mentions how Mr. Ford raised the wages of his factory workers above market value, so they could afford to buy the cars they produced. Little known fact: Ford was then sued by the shareholders for breach of fiduciary responsibility. He lost.

Google is a publicly traded company. Its CEO and board are bound by law to seek the greatest returns possible for shareholders. If they don't seek the highest returns, they can be sued. They have decided that it is no longer in the monetary interest of Google to subsidize legal costs for an entire industry.

jfornear• 18 years ago

Interesting. Can you use this same reasoning (bound by law to maximize shareholder value) to sue corporations for not operating in developing countries where they can take advantage of lower wages, cheaper labor, no unions, etc? Think GM or something.

zaius• 18 years ago

That's a little different because a company could argue that moving operations offshore would hurt sales. If a company was already operating offshore, and they turned down an offer to move to another, cheaper location, then you'd probably have a case.

bdr• 18 years ago

Doesn't this apply less to Google because of the way in which they went public?

jhancock• 18 years ago

I find it interesting that many believe a company's "CEO and board are bound by law to seek the greatest returns possible for shareholders" is actual law. Is it? What is this law? Companies are state entities, not federal ones. So the only federal law would be SEC stuff, right? I find it hard to believe that all 50 states have the same law.

IANAL, I would appreciate someone pointing me the law or court decisions that have made this to be.

ulysses• 18 years ago

Two relevant Wikipedia links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_directors

Summary of fiduciary duty as I understand it (IANAL):

An agent has a responsibility to act in his or her client's best interest. An example is a trust, which is obligated to act in the financial best interests of the beneficiary. I believe a lawyer's duty to the client and a doctor's duty to the patient are similar. In the case of a board of directors, they have a legal responsibility to act in the best interest of the shareholders.

Tichy• 18 years ago

How would such a trial proceed, though? Would the judges then have to decide what course of action would have been the best for the company? And how could they ever prove that their opinions are correct? How could they prove that raising the wages would not benefit Ford in the long run?

So in effect one could buy really cheap managers who screw up and then sue them. Then one could get the "expertise" of the law courts for free to decide on the best action for a company.

silentbicycle2• 18 years ago

About Henry Ford: Could you provide a citation for this? I'm not doubting you, but it's a really interesting point, and I'd like to dig deeper. (If not, I'll search the next time I have a chance...)

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

Sure. I'm getting it from Jared Diamond's book Collapse:

http://books.google.com/books?id=QyzHKSCYSmsC&pg=RA1-PA4...

Probably a good idea to check his source, but I can't find my hard copy at the moment.

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

I'm not sure that this is any shift at all in Google's policies. It's probably that in all of these cases Google was trying to do maximize their own profits.

It probably just weighed the odds and decided, in those cases where it went to trial, that it was better to try to win the case than pay a huge settlement check. In the Author's Guild suit, they probably realized they had little chance of winning and the results of a loss would be incredibly costly.

It's a mistake to assume a corporation is (or should be) trying to fight for innovation rather than to maximize their own profit. Google may try to avoid evil, but they're not moral crusaders either.

pedalpete• 18 years ago

I think this is more of a strategic decision. The opportunity is for google and only google to pay to scan all the books. This increases google's value, and competitors need to decide if it is worth it to them to spend the dough.

DLWormwood• 18 years ago

I think that the point the EFF article was trying to make: that Google is helping itself at the potential "expense" of others. But the EFF is an industry-wide advocacy body, so they have a vested interest in promoting the industry as a whole by helping to establish precedent, not just helping individual companies.

Google is Done Paying Silicon Valley's Legal Bills

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