SIVACRACY.NET: Cory Doctorow on Google Library: Publishers should thank Google

Boing Boing: Why Publishing Should Send Fruit-Baskets to Google:

Google's new Book Search promises to save writers' and publishers' asses by putting their books into the index of works that are visible to searchers who get all their information from the Internet. In response, publishers and writers are suing Google, claiming that this ass-saving is in fact a copyright violation. When you look a little closer, though, you see that the writer/publisher objections to Google amount to nothing more than rent-seeking: an attempt to use legal threats to milk Google for some of the money it will make by providing this vital service to us ink-stained scribblers.

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But this is also publishers' and writers' biggest opportunity. The Internet makes it possible for the social factors that sell books -- the sense of community engendered by shared cultural referents, the conversation that books enable -- to flourish. It may be that books aren't outcompeted by the Internet at all -- it may be that Internet media are the lifeline that books need to survive in a world where the retail ecosystem of booksales has been denuded to stubble and mud.

That's where Google Book Search comes in. GBS puts books on a near-equal footing with other information resources, the ones that are currently kicking the hell out of us. When a customer performs a Google search, she can get results, right there on her screen, from real, actual books, books that can often be purchased with a single click.

Now, Sivacracy.net readers should know that Cory and I disagree on this -- especially his fair use analysis, which completely ignores more relevant precendents like MP3.com and Tasini. Face it, the case law on fair use is totally hostile to Google.

I also thought Cory should deal with the problems Google Library generates: privacy, DRM, software patents, proprietary formats, etc.

But please read his entire essay. It's very important.

I read a draft of the article a few weeks ago and tried to get Cory to realize that a text-based index is actually a bigger forest in which to hide a tree (or a more disorganized library in which to hide a book). He did not buy my argument. I don't buy the argument that Google's Book Search service rescues books from obscurity largely because we have no idea what the standards of ranking are or will be.

Can someone out there make this argument (about obscurity and indexing) better than I could?

Comments

I sent Cory this email earlier today. It's not about obscurity but about trust and monopoly.

Cory,
I think you're making a big mistake here.

I was at the Association of American Publisher's conference and the most interesting thing that I heard was not Dr. Coleman’s speech about burning libraries, but an answer to a question she was asked about University of Michigan's participation in GBS.

Q: Some publishers have asked Google if they would give the copyright holders a digital copy of their content in exchange for a license to make those copies. Google has yet to respond to those requests. Would University of Michigan consider giving the copyright holders a copy of their own content?

A: No. Our contract with Google prevents us from doing that.

What she’s talking about is section 4.4.1 of the contract which prevents the University from giving a third party a copy of the files. There is nothing else in the contract preventing the University from giving copies to the copyright holders. When I first read that section I thought it was a protection for publishers, preventing the University from distributing copies. Now I understand that it's Google's way to protect its monetizing of that content.

Ask yourself why Google wouldn’t want the copyright owners to have a copy of their own content? I estimate that of the in copyright content that Google will be digitizing, at least 60% of that content will be getting digitized for the first time by this project, probably more. Most publishers didn’t start creating content digitally until the 90s and most have only begun to digitize their older content. Could it be that Google wants to prevent the copyright holders from competing with them in the eventual selling of that content online?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4598478.stm

After reading the story linked above and other public relations material from Google I’m convinced that’s what’s happening. Google wants a monopoly on the distribution of that content online, and unfortunately The University of Michigan and you are aiding them in that pursuit. Yes they intend to give the copyright holders a cut, but as the tone of Larry Page's statement conveys, we will agree to it because we have no other choice.

We are a university press publisher, and we are now a branch of our university's library system, our mission is the dissemination of scholarship. Not only does Google undermine the sustainabilty of that mission, they will soon be empowered to choose who will be allowed to access that scholarship digitally and how much they will pay for it. Why do you disregard the fact that they are a publicly held company with a responsibility to their shareholders? Read John Battelle's piece just posted on BB and ask yourself, do you really trust a company that puts business before freedom? Why would Google prevent one university library from giving another university library their own scholarship?

You may not remember but I wrote an editorial in Publisher's Weekly asking Google to exchange the right to include our books for a digital copy of those books. No money, just a copy. Some we wanted to include in the library's open access digital bookshelf, some we wanted to donate to the Open Content Alliance, and all of them would have been brought back into print as cheap Print on Demand editions. Google told us no, and told us that they were planning to get into content distribution so we shouldn't worry about bringing them back into print. We weren't allowed to disclose that though because of an NDA. Now that they themselves are disclosing it I hope people will start putting two and two together.

I know GBS seems like a great idea, and it might be if it were occurring in the public sector, but please think about these issues. It is not a simple as it seems. It's not about snippets, fair use, or selling books, it is about control. Are you sure we should hand this much control over our printed legacy to a corporation?

Tony Sanfilippo
Penn State University Press

Posted by: Tony Sanfilippo | February 14, 2006 08:07 PM

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