Google is grinding through various library collections for every book it can scan, without asking for permission. I, for one, think that's great. I see that my last book, Online! The Book, is in the collection, but this doesn't bother me, because I am apparently one of the few out there who has used Google Book Search. I found it anything but a threat to book sales or anything else to do with publishing. The fuss over this book-search initiative is idiotic and naïve. It's not as if Google is printing books, or that any of these books are readable as complete editions on Google: They are not. With many of the books, whole sections are removed and unavailable. You can thumb through a few hard-to-read pages, but that's it....This is a research tool and a public resource most of all, and it is no threat to writers or publishers. It's too bad that this supposedly intellectual crowd doesn't understand this—it indicates how far down the societal pecking order they have fallen during the rise of the technological society. The sad part is that this database will actually enlarge the fortunes of the publishing industry and writers alike by improving the accessibility of lesser-known works. Joe Schmo will get due credit for his early remarks about a topic rather than simply being ripped off by other writers....Too bad writers can't see the benefits of universal access to their works. It's possible to increase sales if people actually know you exist. Apparently writers would rather live and die in obscurity than have their books scanned and available for sampling....When Google began this, I surmised that it was just another way to boost ad revenues with more page views. But now I'm guessing that if there is any mercantile angle, it's to sell the books themselves. And you can be sure that book sales would increase with this mechanism in place, a reality ignored by the protesting writers and publishers. They bank on the superstition that this will somehow hurt sales. "It's stealing!" Shades of the RIAA. In fact, I suspect that this won't even be a money-maker for Google; it's probably a loss leader. Meanwhile, Google is creating a new public resource that should be given a Nobel Peace Prize.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/20/2006 09:34:00 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.
