Open Access News

Take this hypothetical scenario: Let's say that somewhere in the stacks at the University of Michigan there is an essay by a writer you've never heard of, on a subject you didn't know about, in a volume no longer in print, by a publishing house no longer in business; let's say, moreover, that even though you don't really know it, this essay is exactly what you're looking for, the answer to all your searching needs, in much the same way you find Web pages every day by people you don't know that turn out to be just the thing. Ideally, as Google envisions it, you could one day go to its search engine, type in a certain bon mot, and find this book, your book. Because it's still under copyright, Google would only show you a few sentences around your search term as it appeared in the text, not the whole volume; but you'd know it was there in the library, and if you wanted it, you'd be free to check it out, or find some way to buy it. Without Google's system, you'll never hear of this book. In such a scenario, proponents of Google's plan see nothing but good -- good for the company, for Internet users, and especially for authors. In most copyright disputes between content companies and tech firms, there is often a legitimate question over which party might benefit more from a new technology, notes Fred von Lohmann, an attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation, which sides with Google in this battle. "Take the Napster case," von Lohmann says. In that situation, Napster claimed that its file-swapping tool could increase CD sales by letting people preview music before they purchased it; the CD industry, meanwhile, said the system had caused a significant drop in sales. Both sides cited numbers to support their arguments, and each theory sounded at least plausible. "But with the Google Print situation, it's a completely one-sided debate," von Lohmann says. "Google is right, and the publishers have no argument. What's their argument that this harms the value of their books? They don't have one. Google helps you find books, and if you want to read it, you have to buy the book. How can that hurt them?" ..."But with the Google Print situation, it's a completely one-sided debate," von Lohmann says. "Google is right, and the publishers have no argument. What's their argument that this harms the value of their books? They don't have one. Google helps you find books, and if you want to read it, you have to buy the book. How can that hurt them?" ...

It's Google's profit motive that raises the suspicion of authors and publishers. As they see it, digital technology provides authors and publishers a new way to make a great deal of money on their back catalogs of books -- a huge source of revenue that is currently being untapped. Google is creating a system that exploits that back catalog, so why shouldn't Google pay content owners for the right use of that catalog? "The author is creating the value here," says Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, "and the author should get some of the money. If there's a new value for books created on the Internet, the authors should be given new incentives to create works for it." ...Many authors feel differently. One is Julian Dibbell, author of "My Tiny Life," a memoir of the author's life in the virtual computer world called LambdaMOO. When told of Aiken's theory that Google's database would use authors like him in the same way that Hollywood might use them, and authors should get paid for allowing their books to go to Google, Dibbell said, "My blood is boiling just as you relay this to me." As Dibbell sees it, "Google is not piggybacking on my creative effort in the same parasitic way that a movie based on a novel might be doing." To Dibbell, Google is acting not like the Hollywood producer who steals an author's ideas, but instead like a book reviewer who popularizes an author's work. After all, Dibbell notes, book reviewers routinely use snippets from books in their reviews, and magazines and newspapers make loads of money from advertisements they run alongside book reviews. Authors don't feel entitled to any of that money, he says, so why should they get a slice of the money Google will make from its service? "Given what's at stake here, which is the creation of a resource that nobody is denying is a good thing, their stance seems wrong to me," Dibbell says of his fellow authors.

(PS: This is the most detailed and careful article I've seen on the controversy over Google Library.)