Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching every frame of every movie ever made. Imagine a bored writer being able to instantly find every movie that directed by James Cameron. Imagine a high school student anywhere in the world discovering a 1950s B-movie only available on VHS. Imagine one giant electronic database that makes all the world's movies discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Now imagine how fast my head would spin when the MPAA caught up with the people who set up that system.

No matter what Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, thinks good intentions do not change the law of copyright and the rights of authors and publishers to defend said copyright. And that looks like exactly what they are doing.  Defending their lawful rights.

No matter how much someone believes that software piracy, movie piracy or music piracy is right and no matter how much they think is "helps" the industry (or the end user for that matter who gets free stuff), it's doesn't make it legal and doesn't make it ethical. 

What I feel is happening here is that Google is desperate to spread.  Web searches have become, well, boring, and they want new and exciting (and potentially profitable) material to play with.  Problem is, they wend about it the wrong way.  An opt-in system would have generated a lot of buzz but it would have been slower, less dramatic and Google couldn’t have played this Robin Hood card where they try to appear like they are robbing the rich to give to the poor.

But it might have been less hassle in the long run.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 11:18 and is filed under PC Doctor's Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.