more on (Satire) Expanding the "Google Print" Concept to Other Media

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim O'Reilly <tim () oreilly com>
Date: October 23, 2005 5:56:06 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] (Satire) Expanding the "Google Print" Concept to  
Other Media



On Oct 23, 2005, at 9:05 AM, Lauren Weinstein wrote:


> My latest "Reality Reset" column takes a satirical look at a way for
> people to obtain vast amounts of free music and movies, by expanding
> the "Google Print for Libraries" concept to these other usually
> copyrighted media.
>
> The column is titled:
>
>    "Free for All: The Google Excuse"
>
> and is at:
>
>    http://www.vortex.com/reality/2005-10-23

Lauren's right that eventually there will be a search index for music  
and movies as well as for books, and is that so bad?  So far, online  
search has been a boon, helping people to discover content,  
increasing the value of the content that is found, rather than  
devaluing it.  Why should it be different for these media types?

Lauren is echoing the fear-mongering of the publishers.  This is not  
about making free content available to all.  Google is very clear  
that all they'll be providing is snippets, as they do in current  
search engines, unless a book is out of copyright, or has been  
explicitly opted in by the publisher.  And the fact that Google  
requires a full copy in order to create the index is consistent with  
many other forms of technology.   Every email or attachment you send  
over a computer network is "copied" (and perhaps even backed up) on  
many different computers, without your explicit knowledge and  
consent.  That's the way computers pass data around -- they make copies.

Regarding the debate about opt-out or opt-in, Google Print for  
Libraries follows exactly the same approach to copyright as web  
search engines.  Web pages are also copyrighted material.  Can you  
imagine a world in which search engines had to ask web sites for  
permission to copy and create an index of their content?  As John  
Battelle describes in his book, The Search, there were in fact web  
page providers who made this argument in the early days of search  
engines.  But common sense prevailed, and the valuable search engine  
world we take for granted today was born.

The publishers' position, that Google should ask them for permission,  
rather than that copyright holders who don't want to be indexed  
should opt out, is the only practical solution.  Under the publisher  
solution, the only works to be indexed will be those that the  
publishers are currently pushing.  And as Larry Lessig is fond of  
pointing out, the works that are currently in print and supported by  
publishers are only a small fraction of all the published works that  
are still in copyright.

If the publisher position were to prevail, the millions of works that  
are in those libraries might as well stay there, never to get on the  
net.  Publishers no longer care about them, in many cases no longer  
even know whether they have rights to them.

On the other hand, if Google's position prevails, we have this  
amazing discovery mechanism that will help us to rediscover lost  
works, as well as to find works that are in print but are not  
available in stores.  That's why the NY Times titled my op-ed essay  
on the subject  "Search and Rescue."  (http://radar.oreilly.com/ 
archives/2005/09/ny_times_op_ed_on_authors_guil.html )

We've done a study of how online access relates to print book sales  
by comparing figures from Neilsen BookScan point of sale data for  
print book sales with online access via our Safari Books Online  
service, and what we've found confirms Chris Anderson's "Long Tail"  
theory -- but with a couple of twists.  First, there is a  
disproportionate level of access online to books that are largely  
unavailable in print -- 23% of Safari access comes from books that  
represent only 6% of print sales; and second, and even more  
interesting, the long tail shows a number of spikes -- much like a  
Stegosaurus tail -- that shows where books that were "lost" in print  
have been rediscovered online.  (I'll be publishing more detailed  
information on this study soon, and will send a note when it's  
available, but I couldn't let Lauren's mis-information go by, even as  
"satire.")

Much as is the case with the web, search engines for books will be an  
amazing tool for users, authors, and publishers alike.  Only the  
short sighted and the greedy (and greed is definitely a factor --  
people seeing that google has figured out how to create value from  
something they've effectively thrown away, and are now suing because  
they want to recapture some of that value) are banging the drum about  
the dangers of this program.


_________________________________________
Tim O'Reilly, Founder & CEO, O'Reilly Media,
1005 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol, CA 95472
+1-707-827-7150 http://tim.oreilly.com






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