Forbes redeems itself a bit

Well, their blog article may have been a solid piece of crap, but this article on Google Print is golden. I especially liked this explanation of the snippet, one of the more contentious issues in the copyfight:

Pat Schroeder, the former Congresswoman from Colorado is now the president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and a vigorous opponent of Google’s plan. She is also an author. I went to Amazon and searched in her book 24 Years of House Work and Still a Mess for the word “property,” and Amazon’s technology found for me on page 286 the following snippet:

"Protecting intellectual property is my main focus at AAP. Technology has made it so easy to copy anything you create ..."

She’s right about technology. However, my finding that snippet and using it for this article is not a copyright violation. I didn’t ask Schroeder or her publisher for permission to use the quote in her book. Indeed, there’s an entire industry, book reviewing, predicated on the ability of people to do something similar to what I’ve just done.