Keeping Google’s tanks off the library lawn
p2pnet news view P2P:- It’s been a busy week. My article on the Google Books settlement (which the BBC headlined as ‘Keeping Google out of Libraries‘, even though my point was that Google should not be the only company in the library, and my original title was ‘Keeping Google’s Tanks Off The Library Lawn’), provoked a fair amount of debate, to the point that I ended up having a long chat on the phone with Santiago de la Mora, the company’s director of book partnerships in Europe and writing it up for the BBC website.
This is what I had to say
Google is in the middle of a massive project to scan and digitise every book it can get its hands on, whether old or new, and if it gets its way then the US courts will soon endorse an agreement between the search engine giant and the US book industry that will allow it to do this without fear of prosecution for copyright infringement.
Authors and publishers will get some money in return, and we will all benefit from the improved access to digitised books that Google will provide.
The deal sounds like a good one, but not everyone is happy with it. The Department of Justice in the US has begun an investigation to see if it is anti-competitive, and last month a number of library associations got together with Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft to form the Open Book Alliancem which argues that it should not go forward.
The details of the settlement are complex, and it is almost impossible to be sure what would emerge from it because many of the provisions involve setting up things like a Book Rights Registry, and we don’t yet know what they will look like.
But whatever the detail there remains a fundamental problem.
It is not that the settlement will give Google indemnity from prosecution should it be found to have scanned books that are in copyright without the copyright owner’s position, nor even that it gives Google freedom to exploit scanned content commercially. It is, rather, that the settlement gives only Google these privileges, and places one company in a prime position to become the world’s de facto librarian instead of encouraging open access, open standards and a plurality of services and service providers.
Neither Google nor any other company should be entrusted with that responsibility, and nothing in the detail of the agreement or the funds that will be made available to authors as a consequence can change this. If Google is given a monopoly, either explicitly in the settlement or implicitly because any other scanning project would be forced to negotiate its own multi-million dollar agreement, then the deal must be rejected.
The proposed settlement came about after Google began a project to scan and index millions of books, including many that are still in copyright. It was sued by groups representing authors and publishers who felt that scanning books, even if the text was only used to create a searchable index which then pointed readers to the relevant text, was an unlicensed use and therefore illegal.
The book trade was also worried that Google might scan the books under the pretext of creating an index and then start offering them online or even selling them, even though it was always absolutely clear that such behaviour would be a breach of copyright.
Instead of fighting the case through the US courts and winning a great victory for those of us who believe that three hundred year-old notions of copyright should not be used arbitrarily to limit new ways of making use of creative works, Google announced in October 2008 that it had reached a settlement with the US Authors’ Guild and the Association of American Publishers that would allow it to continue scanning with permission.
At the moment the settlement hangs in the balance, waiting for what is quaintly termed a ‘fairness hearing’ in US District Court on October 7. At this hearing of the questions raised since the settlement was announced will be debated, including the question of how the relatively small Authors Guild came to speak for all published writers in the US, living and dead, in negotiating with Google.
One of the arguments being made in favour of Google, most clearly by US industry analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, is that Google deserves to benefit from having taken the risk of digitising books when the project’s legal status was uncertain and that Google, unlike Microsoft and Yahoo!, has invested millions of dollars in the project and is committed to pushing forward.
Microsoft did indeed abandon its own book scanning project, Live Search Books, in 2008, largely on cost grounds but also because the legal uncertainties clearly exposed the company to potential liability in what was never a core area of its activity [update - Danny Sullivan in the comment below notes that Microsoft was only scanning out of copyright books and that the company said it was dropping the project on cost grounds. He's right - my understanding is that the issue of copyright was also a factor but that is not what the company said at the time].
But Lindsay’s view seems hard to accept. Pretending that the world’s libraries are some unexplored continent to be opened up and claimed by the adventurers from Mountain View may appeal to the frontier mentality of US commentators, but it is not a metaphor likely to have much appeal elsewhere.
For one thing the bookshelves of the worlds are already inhabited, just like the territory of the United States, and those of us who remember the fate of the Native Americans may not be happy to see Google build its railroad tracks over our tribal lands.
Even without the dodgy analogy, the project of digitising the information held in the world’s printed books is too important to be dealt with purely as a commercial venture between rights holders and a potential supplier of services.
We are at an inflection point in world history, and the transition we are making from analogue to digital is happening so quickly and offers so many delights that there is a temptation to let the past moulder in archive boxes and concentrate solely on the new and digital.
For those who take that view then letting Google pay to digitise books is an uncontroversial decision, one that can deliver more digital stuff to search through without apparently costing anything.
George Santayana wrote ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’, but it may also be true that those who do not care to digitise their own past will end up paying a high price to regain what they give up so thoughtlessly.
If we let Google have its settlement we will all be the poorer. Not for a while, perhaps, but one day we will need more from this new library of Alexandria than Google is willing to offer, and find that the price it demands is more than we can pay.
Bill Thompson – andfinally.com
[Thompson is a UK-based writer and broadcaster. He has a weekly column on the BBC WebWise site, and contributes both on and off-line to The Guardian, The Register and The New Statesman, among others. His "inappropriately-titled 'billblog' "appears weekly on BBC News Online in the technology news section.]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
September, 2009
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September 10th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Hear, hear!
September 12th, 2009 at 4:38 am
copyright should be illegal that is what I think, everything should be copyleft [or u r too scared to do so]
September 13th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I don’t see how Google’s Digital Library is going to cause problems on the scale that a lot are thinking of. For my argument as to why I, as a consumer, think this is an excellent idea I present the following.
1. Out of Print books. I read ALOT. in fact, I am constantly looking for recomendations, checking out reviews, and buying books that fit my fancy. When a publisher takes these out of print, not only am I forced to buy used (depriving publisher and author of my $), but often looking at ludicrous prices (examples, “Fire Margins” by Lisanne Norman reached WELL over $100 with some places still asking $253, thankfully back in print, and Jim Lane’s “Redeeming Factors”, now $75 used, though I understand it may be brought back soon. doubt me? check Amazon’s used, or a book retailer of your choice). Neither of these can be considered collectibles, but the lack of availability leads to insane prices by places that don’t give a dime of it to the people who deserve it. An e-version will continue to generate a revenue to those who hold the rights of a book, even when the publisher decides for whatever reason to cease print.
2. Digital books. As I said, I read, a LOT. I have tried e-books, and I have played with the Kindle. e-books pose no threat to their paper cousins for a LONG time. ever tried to read a novel on a computer screen? it sucks. e-readers are advancing well, but are still too costly and the tech isn’t there yet. Even then, I highly doubt that good ol paper has a thing to worry about.
3. Availability and competition. The only thing Google can claim to be first on with this whole e-book thing is scope. From what I understand, they even offered access to their database to their competitors. Yes, they might have a huge edge in the capability of dictating the price, but I highly doubt “we will be poorer” for it, that is just bad business. Their job is to make money, and it seems to me that Google is of the market mindset of keep the prices low to sell to A LOT of people, instead of selling at a high price to a select few. There is no problem with people concerned about what they *may* do, it helps keep em honest. but you also need to look at what a project like this *can* do.