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One man's crime is another's...

Imagine if Google decided to make the entire inventory of recorded music and movies available for download from its websites -- without the permission of the copyright owners.

I'm talking about everything from the earliest recordings to today's top-10 hits and block-buster movies.

How do you think the courts would respond to this gross breach of the law.

The RIAA and MPAA would instantly demand that the infringing material was pulled and the courts would likely impose massive fines on the search-engine giant.

Sounds reasonable doesn't it.

Or maybe not.

What if we were talking about books instead of movies and music?

Should copyrighted print media be treated any differently to audio and visual material?

Well a US Appeals Court seems to think so, and it's outrageous!

While US courts regularly impose massive punitive damages in favour of MPAA and RIAA members, it seems they have a completely different approach to claims made by authors and book publishers.

When the Authors Guild and a bunch of other copyright holders whose written and photographic work has allegedly been freely republished by Google took their case to court, Judge Pierre Leval indicated that these people ought to be glad that Google was using their intellectual property.

Leval indicated that authors should be rejoicing that Google was effectively promoting their work and claimed that this unauthorised republishing had "enormous value" for culture.

Excuse me?

If that's the case, then why can't someone set up a free music download service, laden with titles from the inventory of Sony, BMG, WMG and a raft of other music publishers then claim the same?

If photographers should be happy that unauthorised publishing of their works is a great promotional opportunity, why can't all those US movie studios accept that those unlawful copies which are to be fund on P2P networks are doing exactly the same for them?

As regular readers will know, I can't abide hypocrisy or double standards -- and this is exactly what we seem to have in respect to copyright law.

It seems that, at least in the USA, your susceptibility to the effects of the law is inversely proportional to the size and wealth of your company.

Kim Dotcom's MegaUpload was destroyed by the US government and law-enforcement because some people used it to distribute copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owners.

Google gets praised by the same people - because its unlawful redistribution of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owners is seem to be of "enormous value".

What a sad twisted world we live in.

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