[mnutt]

For an even starker example, look at the Google Books case. They scanned thousands of books and made portions of them available online. Authors guild sued them, and it was dismissed because it benefited society to have the works available.

[bsdetector]

I find Google Books ruling particularly insane... they have undeniably been copying books illegally and for a profit motive (even if they don't yet make money directly off the copies), but this is okay because they've provided a valuable service.

What?!

If it's such a valuable service they could have given a cut to the authors instead of illegally copying their books. Allowing somebody to break the law because you believe they are morally good is textbook legislating from the bench and it's wrong.

[teddyh]

Not only that, but now Google has an exclusive license deal to do this, and nobody else can do it.

[kahirsch]

No, there was a proposed settlement with the Author's Guild that sort of but not really was an exclusive deal with Google. But that settlement was not approved.

That proposed deal did apply only Google, but it didn't preclude anybody else from negotiating their own deal.