Burning in the Google toaster |
No matter which side you fall on with the whole Google Print controversy: author/publisher or Google, this could very well be a significant historical decision. I’ve been leaning with support towards author/publishers, but I also can appreciate Googles goal of indexing out of print books in particular. It’s a shame to see these books unavailable somewhere.
Brian Dear posts a detailed contrarian viewpoint to Professor Lawrence Lessig’s video which suggests that Google could be on the right side of the law with their book search initiative:
You know who else loses? We all do. And not in the way Lessig thinks we do. We all lose because what Google is doing is hastening the demise of libraries. Hastening the demise of books. Hastening the requirement that you must have a computer, and a network connection, to get access to books. Face it: books are toast. Google Book Search is the toaster.
What irony! Google Print program being some type of toaster? Sort of Fahrenheit 451ish. Time has been the biggest toaster of books in the sense that as the dust settles on a book and it goes out of print. Google wants to create a program which works against time, fights obscurity, which seems like a noble goal and I’m not sure I can fault them for trying to make a profit along the way. Should that profit be shared with the original creators of the work? That’s the part I have trouble with because they would be making money from the work. Is Google Print a derivative work? I don’t think so. It will be interesting to see how this comes out, one way or another.
Lessig will be inside Second Life this coming Wednesday. Haven’t attended a crossover event like this in SL yet, so I’m hoping I’m able to attend. Middle of the week not usually the busiest time, although we lost a day to holiday today, so not sure.
How do you think this Google Print decision will rule out? Will it be in favor of Google or the authors/publishers? What should the decision be?
Did this post make you go hmm?
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I hope that you look at the Lessig video again because one of the points he makes is that current publishers flatly state that public libraries should not exist. So if Goole wins public libraries disappear over time. If Lessing looses the publishers become stronger and their next target might be libraries. After all fair use does not exists according to publishers, right?
Comment by Paul Benjamin — January 16, 2006 @ 2:25 pm PST
Paul - libraries are just as much under threat of the internet itself as they are of anything Google does or does not do with Google Print. When was the last time you visited the local library? I don’t know think Google’s motives are completely altruistic here. If they were then as Brian suggests above, why don’t they setup a non-profit company to manage this Google Print?
The answer is in the $$$ and if Google is making their own cash registers ring, hopefully they will find a way to pay the original creator of the work and the publisher. I think that would be the fairest system. If they could send traffic back to the author, great, and that is one form of payment.
That’s why people don’t mind search engines because they generate traffic back to the creator’s work where they can monetize themselves.
I’m looking at the creator of the work here above anybody else. When we create something we have the right to determine who can use that work. Calling what Google is doing — without permission of the copyright holder — “fair use” seems like an awfully big stretch to me.
Comment by TDavid — January 16, 2006 @ 2:34 pm PST
It seems to me that physical libraries and books are going the way of clay tablets and papyrus codices — not just because of Google, but because of computers and the Internet in general. And I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. 20 years ago I searched everywhere for Livy’s History of Rome. I couldn’t find all of the volumes anywhere. Now, you can find it on-line from any number of universities. Ten years ago, when I was researching the Sumerian beer sikaru to attempt to reproduce it, there were absolutely no hits on that word in any search engine. Today, you can readily find recipes and supporting ancient texts. Digital information is here, move over paper.
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 16, 2006 @ 2:51 pm PST
I could have said “roll over paper”, but that might have attracted some unwelcome attention from onlooking enforcement.
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 16, 2006 @ 2:53 pm PST
“When was the last time you visited the local library?”
The last time I visited my public library was Saturday, they are closed today for MLK.
So what if Google is a money grubbing company. What is going to become of the 70% of books that are under someone’s copyright but is not in print? Let Google make a little money on them and at least have a digital copy for someone like me, in a small town in Kansas, to search. The important thing is that the ideas in those books becomes researchable for us out here in flyover country. If the publishers thinks that Google is making money off their work why don’t they create their own search service. Maybe for the same reason they let the book go out of print?
Google is offering the equivalent of robot.txt to let the publishers to opt-out. So the publishers can opt-out of what they are sure that they can make money, current works. The out of print books are only available in very short segments, what would be fair use if I pasted into this comment for example. Odd it is OK if I do it but evil if Google does it? If there was a working property system, like exists for land, then a permission system would make sense. The question is who do you go to for a fifty year old book that was published by a a company that was merged in to another company, that was merged into another …
Let me ask you, do you have a copy of all of the web sites that you have created over the years? The publishers don’t value their out of print work anymore than an a five-year-old web site on the waybackmachine. There is probably not any real money in out of print books. If Google finds a value in them then they should not begrudged for making money on them. Heaven knows the publishers and authors haven’t found a way of making money on them.
I guess our difference boils down to this. You believe that if Google finds a way on making money on searching out of print work they should share it with the author and if they are not willing to do it up front they should be forbidden to try. It is better that the book remains on the shelf never looked at rather than let someone search the text and be exposed to the ideas of the author should Google get twenty-five cents for a click through on an ad beside the search.
I am saying that the free market has spoken on the out of print work, they have little to no value, hence they are out of print. I think that Google should be allowed to try to make money. I am fairly sure that there isn’t any real money in it but if I am wrong I am sure that the publishers will cash in just as much as Google. Maybe some good books could be put back into print? A few less fake memoirs could do no harm. Only short segments will be displayed to me after the search, not the entire work. I will still have to go to library to get the book, maybe libraries still have a purpose after all?
I guess I am a greater believer in the free market than you. Certainly a greater believer in the good of sharing ideas. Create something great, the money will follow. I hope Google gets to try.
Comment by Paul Benjamin — January 16, 2006 @ 10:09 pm PST
[…] The subject is the ongoing Google Print controversy . This happened to be the only thing I wrote about yesterday on MLKJ day. Paul is leaning toward Google Print in letting them index all the books and I’m leaning the opposite way: toward the authors/publishers. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Paul thinks he is “… certainly a greater believer of the good of sharing ideas” — January 17, 2006 @ 9:21 am PST
Sterling - you are correct that paper is living on borrowed time. We have better uses for trees. I’ve been subscribing and using digital magazines almost exclusively for a couple years now. Although, I must admit that it is still more convenient carrying around a paperback than it is most readable portable devices, although even that is getting better with cool devices like the iPod color, Sony PSP and other similar devices. Even that Oqo looks pretty sweet, although at over two grand after taxes, I think the $5 paperback is still a wiser option for the pocketbook.
Paul - not only do I have backup of material that exists in the WayBackMachine, I have backups of content that predates the WayBackMachine itself. I also have backup of content that was posted in walled garden areas and has since rolled off their servers. Stuff that was published one place and that place is no longer in business or on the web. In internet publishing it is not uncommon for those of us who have been around awhile to ‘outlive’ the publishers. Stuff that Google or any other search engine couldn’t get to at the time it was published on the web, I also possess backups. And beyond that, I have material that has never been published — lots of it. I don’t see Google or the WayBackMachine as my backup provider and I would not suggest that as a viable long term reliable solution for any author/publisher, despite the fact that they are worth billions.
Lastly, the entire dedicated server where this website lives is backed up daily so the most we would ever lose is 24 hours, maybe a couple days if the most recent nightly backup was fubarred.
Anyway, I wrote a much longer, detailed reply to the rest of your commentary, where I shared much, much more of my current feelings about Google Print here: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20060117/2853/
I do thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and encourage you to continue to do so. You made me go hmm.
Comment by TDavid — January 17, 2006 @ 9:40 am PST