Publishers and authors are suing Google over its Book Search program (formerly called Google Print), which lets users search for terms within volumes. Though users will see only a few lines of text related to the search term, Google is planning to digitize entire copyrighted works from the collections of three university libraries. The publishers and authors contend that without their approval, that is a violation of copyright laws....
Google ... maintains that it needs to scan a whole book for its search engine to work. Successful searches will return only three to five lines of text, which the company says constitutes a "fair use," allowed under copyright law.
David Drummond, Google's general counsel, said the company's service allowed users to find books that are in libraries but no longer in bookstores, and that would otherwise go undiscovered by most potential readers.
[Allan Adler, a vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers,] and Nick Taylor, president of the Authors Guild, which is also suing Google, made several pointed references to Google's status as a for-profit company. "The issue here is indeed control," Mr. Taylor said. "It is the appropriation of material that they don't own for a purpose that is, however altruistic and lofty and wonderful, nevertheless a commercial enterprise."
Translation: Google is making money, so we don't care that it is improving life for both authors and readers. We want some of the money!
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It's reasonable that authors and publishers want to make money from the use of their intellectual property. The problem is publishers didn't get there first by offering their in-print selections in CD form or downloadable from the internet. Google shouldn't be faulted for seeing the future and heading in that direction because however book publishing evolves, it won't involve words typed on paper.
For out-of-print books, you'd think authors would be delighted that Google is preserving their work in their data files even though it really should be the Library of Congress who is doing this important work.
Coinicidentally I wrote about Google yesterday at my blog. I based my analysis on other things such as the excellent Cringely article about Google's future but I have linked to this because I think that Slocum's comment in particular is very good.
... "and publishers, of course, get nothing from used book sales ..." and neither do authors. Of course this is true, but it never crossed my mind. Instant answers and instant clarifications -- blogs have the answers.
Angela Hoy at WritersWeekly has written extensively about this issue, and the generally screwed-up state that the traditional publishing industry is in. Reading her site on these issues is an education unto itself.
You're right, starless, that people still want actual books to read when it comes to longer forms. The solution to all of this mess, really, is to transform the entire publishing industry to a print-on-demand model, wherein every book must be paid for (as opposed to ordered and then returned if not purchased). With print-on-demand, a book doesn't ever have to go out of print.
Watch how quickly the authors will sit up and applaud if GooglePrint could make their works available via POD publishers, with royalties as appropriate (to both the POD publisher and the author). It would seem to be a much more fair and sustainable model. Getting there won't be fun, but the publishing industry is in the midst of multiple crises now anyway.
The homeschool curriculum we use (www.amblesideonline.org) uses lots of books in the public domain that are available online for free. Partly this is because often the older books are "better": more literary, more interesting, more challenging. Some people reformat the online text and print it out. Some publishers reprint them and sell them. (www.yesterdaysclassics.com does this.) Some read some selections directly from the screen, but they usually limit this to avoid eye-strain.
For us, the worst case is a book that is out of print but not in the public domain, because the supply is scarce and when many of us all start trying to buy books from that limited supply it naturally drives the price up. A particular history book published within the last fifteen years, originally sold for something like $15, was selling recently for over $50 because so few copies were available, but the publisher was unwilling to either reprint the book or let another publisher reprint it.
Libraries are even more sue worthy than bookstores given that almost all libraries have copy machines available.
The only possible purpose would be to violate copywright (fair use you say, pah!, I spit on your fair use).
Having those machines near all those books should be viewed as grokster level inducement to commit a crime.
(all those copy machines lead to file sharing, it's a slippery slope)
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