Google's latest ambition - to digitise practically every book ever written so they can be searched in a fraction of a second - is so alluring that I find myself hoping it will win the lawsuit brought against it by publishers, even though I can't for the life of me work out which side is legally in the right as regards copyright....[The project] could increase the knowledge of practically everyone willing to learn, cut down the years of research needed to do a PhD, and may even provide a legitimate reason for continuing improvements in our school and college examination results....There is no problem digitising books that are out of copyright - which could lead to a boom in the rapidly expanding print-on-demand industry.
But publishers are very angry about Google scanning books that are still covered by copyright protection, even if they are out of print and even though Google has offered an opt-out clause for authors and publishers not wanting to be part of it.
Google argues that for books not in the public domain it will merely provide pointers that contain the search terms used with, at most, a few lines of text. So if you want the whole book you will have to buy it at Amazon or your local bookshop.
That seems fair enough and a lot less damaging to authors than readers going into their local library and photocopying page after page....Since, in the absence of this initiative, [in-copyright but out-of-print] books would stay in literary limbo, isn't Google doing the world a favour?...Google wouldn't exist if its content providers [for ordinary or non-book searchers] had demanded royalties. Why didn't they? It was partly because the internet hasn't managed to find an efficient system for collecting micro-payments. But it was also because there was, and is, a kind of collective, if subconscious acceptance that the benefits of having all that information available for nothing far outweighs the messiness of asking everyone to pay, say, 1p every time they view a page.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/21/2005 11:29:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
