The Official Google Blog posts a detailed explanation for why they keep wanting to pursue Google Print, despite the fact it is so unpopular, and is generating legal action against them:

The answer is that this program, which will make millions of books easier for everyone in the world to find, is crucial to our company’s mission. We’re dedicated to helping the world find information, and there’s too much information in books that cannot yet be found online. We think you should be able to search through every word of every book ever written, and come away with a list of relevant books to buy or find at your local library. We aim to make that happen, but to do so we’ll need to build and maintain an index containing all this information.

The problem I see with Google’s aspirations, no matter how altruistic they might seem or actually be, is that they aren’t asking permission in advance, they are forging ahead with a strategy of if you don’t want to be listed, just contact us and we’ll remove you. This isn’t an opt-in approach, this is opt-out. Admittedly, as I write this, I can’t think of a single good reason why any copyright holder would not want to make it easier for readers to find and buy his/her book. So should this grant Google the ability to steamroll in and copy and index their content?

Others are blogging with their thoughts on Google Print.

The PC Doctor writes:

I hope that Google now finally take this as an indication of how the publishing industry feel about this gross violation of intellectual property. The motto of “Do no evil” is starting to wear thin. You’ve gone too far with this and starting to look suss.

I support Google’s goals in trying to index the world’s information, but should they do it at the expense of making assumptions about the copyright owner’s wishes as to how their material will be used?

And will they share this information with others just as freely?

John Battelle talked to Allan Alder, counsel for the AAP, and found that this issue is more than meets the eye:

First, who is making the money? Second, who owns the rights to leverage this new innovation - the public, the publisher, or … Google? Will Google make the books it scans available for all comers to crawl and index? Certainly the answer seems to be no. Google is doing this so as to make its own index superior, and to gain competitive advantage over others. That leaves a bad taste in the publisher’s mouths - they sense they are being disintermediated, and further, that Google is reinterpreting copyright law as they do it.

Ask the copyright owner’s permission first. Get permission to use the content the way you want to use it. Oodle ran afoul with Craigslist recently over scraping their classifieds ads without permission. Other mashup operations have similarly been denied access that they never appeared to have asked permission to access.

This opt-out usage trend on the web is becoming more disturbing. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s there for the taking. It’s copyrighted, not copyrapeit.

If Google gets permission first, then they don’t have to worry about these legal challenges giving them a ton of bad PR and flak. There will be plenty of copyright holders who do want Google to index their work.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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