more Google

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Nick Schulz <nschulz () techcentralstation com>
Date: November 3, 2005 2:44:01 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: more Google
Reply-To: nschulz () techcentralstation com

Hi Dave.  I see you have a post on the Google print debate.  I  
recently wrote a piece for Forbes.com on this topic.  Link and  
article below.



Best,



Nick Schulz

Editor

TCS



http://www.forbes.com/home/infoimaging/2005/11/03/google-print- 
project_cx_ns_1103googlecomment.html



Commentary
Don't Fear Google
Nick Schulz, 11.03.05, 11:00 AM ET

Google wants to scan all the books in the stacks of several of the  
world’s major research libraries to make these books searchable  
online. But lawsuits are threatening to shut the project down. Should  
they?

Called the Google Print Library Project, it has produced strong  
opposition, particularly from the publishing industry and writers’  
guilds. Opponents fear this effort violates their property and  
copyrights and robs them of just desserts. They have some legitimate  
concerns, but ultimately the project is not just in Google’s (nasdaq:  
GOOG - news - people ) interest, but in the interest of writers and  
publishers as well--and of the rest of the world, too.

Under Google’s plan, searches of scanned books will yield relevant  
“snippets” from those books on Google’s Web pages. Google hasn’t  
clearly defined what those snippets might be--hence much of the alarm  
over their proposal. Theoretically, a “snippet” could be an entire  
book, which would no doubt be a violation of copyright. The company  
announced today that it has launched the first part of the project  
using books in the public domain.

Fortunately, we have a sense of what a snippet might be, since the  
online book retailer Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people )  
offers snippets in its searchable “Look Inside” feature of books it  
has scanned for its Web site.

Pat Schroeder, the former Congresswoman from Colorado is now the  
president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and a  
vigorous opponent of Google’s plan. She is also an author. I went to  
Amazon and searched in her book 24 Years of House Work and Still a  
Mess for the word “property,” and Amazon’s technology found for me on  
page 286 the following snippet:

"Protecting intellectual property is my main focus at AAP. Technology  
has made it so easy to copy anything you create ..."

She’s right about technology. However, my finding that snippet and  
using it for this article is not a copyright violation. I didn’t ask  
Schroeder or her publisher for permission to use the quote in her  
book. Indeed, there’s an entire industry, book reviewing, predicated  
on the ability of people to do something similar to what I’ve just done.

The way the current copyright law works, I can take a book out from  
any library, read it and write a review of it for publication on the  
Web site I edit or in the pages of Forbes.com or anywhere else. This  
“fair use” of material involves no copyright violation. Readers  
benefit from learning a bit about the book, authors and publishers  
benefit from increased exposure.

While the details need to be hammered out, what Google hopes to do is  
similar. It’s not proposing making an entire copyrighted book  
available for public viewing. Instead, it’s enabling anyone at any  
time to see the functional equivalent of a quote or passage from a  
newspaper or magazine book review.

Google maintains the project is legal under so-called “fair use”  
provisions. The publishers disagree. The publishers’ argument seems  
to be that since Google first must make a digital copy of the book in  
order to scan it with its technology, that act of copying constitutes  
a copyright infringement.

But here we are faced with another way in which technology forces us-- 
whether we’d like to or not--to revisit and refine our laws  
protecting creators and innovators. When notions of “fair use” first  
evolved, they did so before anyone would have had the ability or the  
incentive to make a copy of every book ever published. Fair use in  
this way never entered the picture.

But data storage and search technologies now make such a project a  
practical possibility. So these technological developments force us  
to reevaluate notions of fair use.

We already permit such uses of snippets for the development of book  
reviews. Google’s proposed technology is an extension of that. It  
permits much wider dissemination of relevant snippets of books--in  
doing so it will whet the appetite of a reading audience that is now  
global in scale. Authors and publishers stand to benefit greatly.

Who knows, after hearing about it in this article for what I’m sure  
is for almost all of you the first time, you might even be inclined  
to buy Pat Schroeder’s book.

Nick Schulz is editor of TechCentralStation.com. You can Google just  
about everything he's ever written.

Want to track news by this author or about this industry? Forbes  
Attache makes it easy. Click here.




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