Google's Book Battle (Publishers sue over its plan put entire libraries online)

Newsweek ^ | October 31, 2005 | Brad Stone

[SamAdams76]

Oct. 31, 2005 issue - On Nov. 1, if all goes according to plan, workers at the University of Michigan, Harvard and Stanford will begin piling all of their books, old and new, onto carts and delivering them into the maw of scanners furnished and financed by Silicon Valley's wunderkind, Google. Employees of the search giant will scan the books and make digital copies, which will then be made accessible and searchable to the 80 million Internet users who visit Google.com every month. To James Hilton, an associate provost at Michigan, the ability to browse books online is nothing short of world changing. "I have a hard time even imagining how important it's going to be to search the printed word as we now search the Web," he says.

[SamAdams76]

Having access to every book ever published, including books that have been out of print for decades - or even centuries - will be awesome.

Hopefully Google can overcome their legal battles and get this to happen.

[jjw]

Sounds neat. What about copyrights though? Libraries lend out music CD's too. If they can make all books available for free, then how about all music?

[KJC1]

I agree about out of print books but I'm not so sure I agree with the rest. How will authors make any money if all of their works are out there for free?

[SamAdams76]

I think you are misunderstanding the intent of what Google is doing. They are only providing excerpts. The purpose is to direct you to sources where you can then purchase the publication. For books that are not currently under copyright protection, then you can access the text of the entire book.

A good analogy is the indexing system at the public library. Public libraries do not have to get permisson from the copyright holders to list publications and provide brief excerpts from them.

[dennisw]

Harvard had their entire International Law library scanned in 10 years ago. My memory is fuzzy ... it may even have have been their entire Law Library

[jwh_Denver]

There are zillions of books that are public domain.

[mikegi]

I think you are misunderstanding the intent of what Google is doing. They are only providing excerpts. The purpose is to direct you to sources where you can then purchase the publication. For books that are not currently under copyright protection, then you can access the text of the entire book.

I imagine the publishers are concerned about google having digital copies of their works on google's servers. I also imagine google's lawyers are salivating at all the potential lawsuits resulting from google's plan! A better plan would be to have google organize a network of publisher servers that it references for searching. That way, the publishers retain the digital copy.

[Reaganghost]

Democrats are nothing, if not a contradiction in reality. The copyright law is in serious need of revision. No one should object to anyone having the exclusive rights to their creation or work product for a time. It is the period of time that this privilege should apply that is the reasonable question that needs review. I think a very strong case could be made that once a publication is in the public library, it is in the public domain. How we travel to, or view the material in the public library is a much different argument.

It is going to also be very interesting to watch how new works are published. I think it may only be a matter of time before some authors do not take their creations to traditional publishers or syndicators, but rather make their "publications" available for download at their own websites for a fee. It is the information age and the electronic age, and there are some significant adjustments and changes coming. For a limited time, lawyers and judges may have some influence, but this is a genie that nobody can put back in the bottle and eventually nobody will want to.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

I agree completely, can't wait to read some of those long out of print.