Open Access News

Peter Brantley, A fire on the plain, Peter Brantley's thoughts and speculations, January 26, 2009.  Excerpt:

...Recently, I spoke with several individuals who had been involved in the settlement negotiations as rightsholders (author or publisher representatives), and it became apparent from their perspective that one of the things that most rankled in these recent commentaries was [Robert] Darnton's suggestion that a single terminal per public library building constituted inadequate open access to the GBS collection – an important issue that I had earlier addressed with considerably less eloquence and historical context.

From the rightsholders' perspective, one terminal per library, instead of being stingy, quivered with profligacy. I heard remarked by several individuals (and often enough now to feel it corroborated) that indeed this concession started out far more restricted: either no public access, or starkly limited access – perhaps apocryphally, a single terminal in each State capitol, or one terminal in each city. In short, it was impressed upon me that libraries were lucky to get as much as they did.

As I understand it, rightsholders feared that having unhindered access to books online at libraries might (among other issues) encourage libraries to decelerate buying print books, thereby reducing royalties to authors and profits to publishers. In this equation, more public access = less revenue.

It is difficult to credit that frustrating access is ever able to delay or stem fundamental social trends – for example, the increasing importance of visual and interactive media. Or impact essential library acquisitions....Or the fact – hold on, this is wild-assed stuff – that access to online books that can't be satisfactorily printed because of restrictive rules might actually generate sales of both print and ebooks. Or the possibility that searching and reading networked books for anyone under the age of 40 might be an inherently social activity that generally increases enthusiasm for all forms of reading. These  conceptions of social engagement, participation, and interaction did not prejudice the conversations in New York City where content owners made decisions about what libraries could do with their new digital books....

Let us consider a far more basic, more fundamental concern: the proposed Google Book Search settlement is embedded in a set of conceptions about books, reading, and information access which is as profoundly obsolescent as the printed Encyclopedia. This settlement was crafted by well-established actors: authors and publishers whose primary cognitive map of the world of books was established in 1965, and these days that they inhabit are only a reaction to it.

I understand and appreciate that the settlement proposal provides for an increase in the number of public terminals, should it pass muster with the rightsholders. But let us call this for what it is: an appropriation of sponsorship of access to our culture that is inadequately informed by imagination, possibility, and fairness....