Laura Quilter on the Conflation of Evils in the Google Library debate
We should be concerned about Google Print's contractual restrictions on holders of its scanned works. But we should not fear Google simply for being the first entrant into the market. Google turns out to be evil? Implementing DRM, gathering and exploiting private personal data, indexing our DNA, imposing restrictive licensing agreements on its source material holders? Fine, criticize the evil practices (and Google too). Some other entity turns out to be evil, and wants to restrict copyright such that only Google's database is valid? Criticize them, too. But I want to recommend that we resist the conflation of evils. If we're concerned that Google is going to have a big huge really valuable database, then the answer is, in First Amendment terms, more speech. More databases, more indexers, more more more.
And by the way, you publishers, authors, and copyright-holders. You want to cash in on this market? Why don't you consider selling the electronic texts to the aggregators and indexers for cheaper than they can scan them in and with reasonable licensing terms? There's your market, right there. In fact, technology has made that market available to you for MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS. Dialog, Lexis, WestLaw, and other database vendors could have been using the full text of books for a really long time. Libraries would have killed to have full-text access to books.
On Laura's first point: Google will use its patents to ensure there is no real competition. We are talking about the next Microsoft here. Why would Google allow competition? I am afraid "more speech" is wishful thinking here.
On Laura's second point: Publishers have been doing exactly what she prescribes here. They have been doing it for almost a decade. I know this because I was involved in discussions among unversity presses on how they might offer this very service (and more, including full-text access). They are suing because Google is undermining that very market before it matures. This is why Google's fair use claims are flimsy. It's not about the book market. It's about the index and electronic text market.