p2pnet - rss feed: Google Print opens its doors
p2p news / p2pnet:- Google recently described violent objections to its Google Print book scan plan as “healthy discussion”.
One of the principal complaints was that it was heavy on Anglo-American content and light on everything else and six European leaders jointly proposed a “European digital library”.
Another, with 125 nonprofit “scholarly publishers” in the US in the lead, centred on possible copyright infringement difficulties.
Addressing the first problem under what it calls an ‘expansion’ move, Google has at last acknowledged that it can’t do a Microsoft – that’s to say, ride rough-shod over objections to a particular project. Consequently, it’s now asking book publishers in France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands and Spain book to submit non-English material.
“The Google Print undertaking represents a major piece of Google’s effort to convert printed material into a digital format so it can be called up from any computing device with an Internet connection,” says BusinessWeek Online.
“By indexing the material, Google hopes to attract more visitors to its Web site and spawn more searches that generate advertising revenue.
“Google’s database already includes books printed in about 100 different languages, but all that material came from U.S., Canadian and Australian publishers that submitted a handful of non-English books on their own.”
But this doesn’t do much for potential copyright difficulties.
“Besides seeking the voluntary cooperation of publishers, Google also has worked out deals with libraries at Harvard, Michigan and Stanford Universities to scan millions of books protected by copyrights,” BusinessWeek points out. “Publishers have argued that Google needs their explicit permission to do so. The industry outrage prompted Google to stop pulling copyrighted books from library shelves until Nov. 1 - the deadline that the company has set for publishers to opt out of the program.
“Google intends to renew its scanning after that, setting the stage for a possible legal showdown over what constitutes ‘fair use’ under U.S. copyright law.
“Publishers that voluntary participate like the book-scanning program because Google strictly limits the amount of material that can be viewed and provides links to Web sites where the entire book can be ordered online. Google doesn’t collect any commissions but makes money by displaying ads next to book excerpts.”
But Michael Gorman, then president-elect of the American Library Association, said he was “underwhelmed” by the idea of short excerpts of copyrighted books.
“The English language with words out of context doesn’t really mean anything,” he said
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See:-
violent objections - Google Library angers academics, May 24, 2005
BusinessWeek - Google opens digital library, September 1, 2005
underwhelmed - Google’s global library, December 16, 2005
