Amazon, MS, and Yahoo Against Google's Library 144
anonymousNR writes "From the BBC, 'Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle said.'"
Open X Alliance (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Competitor is kicking your ass at X
2. Form Open X Alliance
3. Profit!
Re:Open X Alliance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Open X Alliance (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly sure that the Internet Archive is a nonprofit.
Yep. Ironically Kahle started it the same year Larry Page started the research project which became google.
But, even if it is a non-profit that doesn't mean MS/Yahoo/Amazon aren't supporting it for their own reasons. I just hope Kahle is shrewed enough to milk as much support out of these new-found 'friends' as he can without giving away the cow.
Google's initiative is remarkably one-sided. But a lot of the opposition seems to be from 'old-media' types who want to keep things locked up in dead trees and paywalls rather than a solution that opens up as much information to as many people as possible. Kahle's got the opportunity to do not just the right thing, but the best thing, I hope he can get away with it.
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If so, perhaps he could tame them.
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One problem with all this that I see is that the quality seems awfully spotty, but usually pretty low. Which means one day it'll have to be done again. Google's main goal is to have as much content as possible, so as to drive advertising revenue. Here's a short extract from a Google book (try it, look through the text of them), showing how well Google is preserving our shared heritage:
[[
SAAVEDRA-FAXARDO (OfBooiBa), a SpMishfipolU
ileal and moral writer,' was bora* May 6^ l58e^>atiAlgaMMm
iittbe kiDgddm
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I would really be surprised if they weren't also storing high-resolution bitmaps.
The physical scanning is the hardest part, no way would they be foolish enough to throw out the basic results of those labors.
They can always OCR a file once their algorithms improve. Or outsource it to the 3rd world for a human to to 100 pages a day for $4 or less.
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Probably this page would benefit from being re-scanned. Such a thing could be found out and corrected, if all those scanned books would be processed in some kind of Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net]-like fashion. OCR is still a bit of an artform at the moment, as far as I'm aware.
I'm looking forward to PGDP (or anyone else really) coming up with a plan for social website
Twitter's back! (Score:1)
How you doing, you scoundrel! I thought we'd lost you forever. It's good to see you back.
Actually for this (Score:2, Interesting)
I like Bradbury's Farenheit 451 [wikipedia.org] better.
Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship; he states that Fahrenheit 451 is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of "factoids", partial information devoid of context, e.g., Napoleon's birth date alone, without an indication of who he was.[6][7]
The two works do have a lot in common in this regard, but I think there's a subtle distinction between manufactured truth and just disassociating the populace from the culture that gives them reference to make them apathetic.
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Er, exactly how often do "open" and "profit" coincide, anyway? They appear to contradict each other at first glance.
Or did you just forget the ??? step?
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They coincide when you're not the one with all the control.
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Yeah, I wasn't sure where to put the ???. But, I think that "open" doesn't always mean "open" in the same sense that we'd all like it too. Mostly I was poking fun at Google's Open Handset Alliance, which may be "open", but at the end of the day has most of the same restrictions that the iPhone does in practical terms. But that's another topic entirely.
Open like Windows? (Score:2)
I think that "open" doesn't always mean "open" in the same sense that we'd all like it to.
For example, MS Windows is the most open OS there has ever been! It opens its legs and every orifice it has when connecting to internet...
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Do you mean open as in free, or open as in venus fly trap?
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It may be open as in free right now but with Micro$oft and Amazon involved pretty soon it will be "not-open-at-all, pay through the nose for DRM'd crap that you can only view on their proprietary device".
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Hopefully where:
taking_a_crap X murder
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Err.. hopefully where:
taking_a_crap < X < murder
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Is that where X.org came from? ;-)
This is not about competing to provide books (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is not about competing to provide books (Score:5, Insightful)
This. If Amazon had any intention of selling these books, they'd be selling these books! They just don't like that Google is getting a slice of their market.
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If Amazon had any intention of selling these books, they'd be selling these books!
I thought that was the point of that Kindle thingy. However, I could be wrong; I'm not very familiar with the device
No, wait, I see where I'm going wrong. For all that DRM, Amazon is selling licenses to view the texts, rather than selling the books themselves. Never mind.
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I happened to be on a plane recently with the unspeakable pundit of SCO fame. The one who's adored throughout slashdot and groklaw for his insightful commentary. Starts with the "End" and ends early, phonetically.
The guy had a Kindle. You couldn't pay me to take the damned thing now. I don't care if it comes with the Library of Alexandria in html with illustrations in PNG and audio books of the great greek philosophers read by the authors themselves. If someone brings one in my house I'm smashing it.
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Uuum... if they're not selling them, it's not their market, is it?
You can't have it both ways. Either they are getting a slice of their market. Or they are not selling these books.
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Google is opening up access to book A which discusses same topics as book B. Amazon makes profit by selling book B. People don't buy book B anymore.
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Hello? McFly?
Amazon has been operating a marketplace for used and out of print books for over a fucking decade.
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Yeah. But they don't (didn't?) make any guarantees that you'll get what you paid for. Or anything at all even.
I used that "service" twice. Never again. It blighted my thoughts towards Amazon before the Kindle even showed up. Now I prefer to purchase elsewhere. If I must buy before I receive, then my local bookstore is quite willing to place orders. And they guarantee that when I order a used book, I'll either get a used book or not be charged. (They do want payment in advance, but unlike Amazon, the
Re:This is not about competing to provide books (Score:4, Insightful)
We have no access to out of print books. That's kinda the point.
A: because it disrupts the flow of a post (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A: Also, it triggers incessant whining. (Score:1)
Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: line irritating?
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Right thing for the wrong reasons, in many ways.
They're doing it so Google doesn't monopolize the 'market' for these books - but I imagine any one of them would do the same thing in a heartbeat if they could. The only saving grace here is having all of them together means they're unlikely to ever get that chance - and having the Internet Archive involved will hopefully keep some sane control over what does happen in the end.
Re:This is not about competing to provide books (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not the exclusive right to make out of print books that is a problem, you can't claim ownership of publishing writes unless you created the content or those rights were assigned by the person who created that content.
The privacy is the big problem. Should a person not have the same right to privacy, when they access a digital library as has been accepted through out the democratic world when they access a hard copy public library.
Google is really going to shoot itself in the foot and then stick the bloody stump in it's mouth. It claiming to be a public virtual library or at least creating the marketing pretence of being one it should be bound by the exact same expectation that people have when they attend a normal library, privacy, free access, non exclusivity of content and of course a complete absence of off topic advertising.
For authors of course, it means a huge amount of exposure and a huge amount of competition. So while the book now is continuously made available to a global audience it is also buried and obscured by a huge number of competitive titles. The best of 'class' books that get 'honestly' reviewed will get the bulk of the market and all the rest thousands upon thousands of titles will get basically nothing. Big profits for the best of 'class', no absolutely not because nearly as good as but one tenth the price will wipe them out. So the commoditising of books, 99 cents a copy anyone. Now add to that non-exclusivity and you can see why authors, especially publisher and, even retail sales are bitching.
You can also bet google will make 'open' books freely available on that site as well, so even more competition. With a world full of people who are more concerned with the knowledge imparted and of course with establishing a publicly acknowledged level of expertise, you can expect open books will inevitably become best of class because they will continue to be worked on, refined and improved, whilst remaining free.
So stop google, 'NO' absolutely 'NOT', let's just ensure non-exclusivity and, mandated strictly enforced privacy ;D.
Loyalty cards (Score:1)
You do know what those loyalty cards from Borders are about, right? The ones where you get charged extra if you refuse to let them link your purchases to some personally identifying information? Sure, you can pay cash and pay extra, but if you put that "The Catcher in the Rye" on your visa, do you know they're not linking it anyway? What makes you think Amazon doesn't market your preference data?
If you want anonymity for your purchases online buy a prepaid credit card and buy from Firefox in privacy mod
Skipped a step (Score:1)
And get some offshore services called "remailers" to send the packages to. They rebundle your purchases and forward them to your real address. If you're really paranoid use several in a chain in different non extradition countries and pay extra for notification of warrant service.
If your tinfoil hat is on that tight, that is.
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In an ideal world that's true. In the real world, the court ruling being protested by the Alliance assigns the rights to out of print books, in perpetuity, to Google.
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Google is really going to shoot itself in the foot and then stick the bloody stump in it's mouth. It claiming to be a public virtual library or at least creating the marketing pretence of being one it should be bound by the exact same expectation that people have when they attend a normal library, privacy, free access, non exclusivity of content and of course a complete absence of off topic advertising.
You have only one of those things at the local library, although advertising is kept to a minimum. I'm tired of seeing flyers for religious events in the window of my local library, but I wouldn't say anything about it. I'm not that tired. As for privacy, it is nonexistent, at least where I live. Keep in mind that detailed records are kept of your reading habits; at our libraries, your internet access is logged. They say they delete the information, but none of the librarians know ANYTHING about the retenti
Re:This is not about competing to provide books (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're not trying to prevent Google from having the sole right. They're trying to prevent Google from having any right. That's evil.
I have concerns about the risk of Google having too much power too. A motto only goes so far. But from where I sit they didn't get the market dynamic they have from buying up ideas and forcing people out of business with dirty tricks [theregister.co.uk] like some of these. They get their markets by competing and giving better service - doing what they do very well. That might be an advantage, but I have trouble coloring it an unfair advantage. Others have the chance after all to step up their game if they're able.
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Which is why the Alliance is protesting! Because the court decision renders them unable to compete - as it assigns rights to solely to Google in perpetuity.
Jesus fucking Christ, if Google proposed killing puppies, and Microsoft complained, Slashdot would be up in arms explaining how killing puppies was a good thing. It *must* be a good thing, as Microsoft is against it after all.
That's the thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, any one of these groups has the ability to strike a deal with the author's guild. Google doesn't have an exclusive license. All they have to do is get up in a business Google's adopted and out-compete them in quality of service.
I can see why they'd rather fight it out in court, but that doesn't mean I favor their cause.
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Before google scanned a single book Brewster went down to Mountain View and asked google to join with their the Internet Archive's and other's scanning effort which was already quite well under way. Brin and Page preferred to go on their own.
But of course (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft won't have any complaints about Corbis and its buying up of images and their publication rights. Especially since Corbis was founded by Bill Gates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbis [wikipedia.org]
Google does have a bit too much power. (Score:1, Interesting)
Knowledge is power. Letting Google control too much knowledge will give them a lot of power. Power corrupts.
Seriously, I'd much prefer an open database of scanned works rather than letting one company negotiate a deal.
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Those companies already have an open database of scanned works hosted by the Internet Archive. You are free to use it and ignore Google's larger, indexed library.
Re:Google does have a bit too much power. (Score:5, Informative)
The complaint, though, is that Google alone will have access to in-copyright but unknown-author books, as part of the terms of the settlement. It's a weird sort of legal loophole in that nobody normally would have access, but if Google successfully settles a class-action lawsuit, then the class representatives can give Google permission on behalf of the class members. The only way for anyone else to get similar permission would be to either contact these unknown authors individually, or find a way to get a class-action lawsuit filed against them that would enable them to negotiate a similar settlement.
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The complaint, though, is that Google alone will have access to in-copyright but unknown-author books, as part of the terms of the settlement. It's a weird sort of legal loophole in that nobody normally would have access, but if Google successfully settles a class-action lawsuit, then the class representatives can give Google permission on behalf of the class members. The only way for anyone else to get similar permission would be to either contact these unknown authors individually, or find a way to get a class-action lawsuit filed against them that would enable them to negotiate a similar settlement.
So the only way to compete in this "market" is to do the same thing that Google did to get into the "market"?
Sounds to me like if a bunch of companies who make gadget X got together (ie, colluded) to stop some other company from building a factory that makes widget Y, because widget Y might cut into gadget X's market-space. If gadget X makers want to control the market, they gotta build factories to make widget Y.
Re:Google does have a bit too much power. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there's no real official way into the market. If they just started violating copyright, it's possible someone might file a class-action lawsuit against them, and possible they might be able to negotiate some sort of settlement similar to the one Google got. But it's not at all clear that that would be the outcome. Google's basically found a very clever way of using the class-action mechanism's preclusion to violate the copyright of people who haven't agreed, because class-action lawsuits are opt-out rather than opt-in.
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Seriously, I'd much prefer an open database of scanned works rather than letting one company negotiate a deal.
It is a nontrivial exercise to obtain high-quality scans of 20+ million books. The scanning must be done non-destructively, since nearly all of these books are out of print. This means someone/something turning pages and taking pictures. It costs most archivists hundreds of dollars to scan each book this way. Which is fine if you're the Brewster Kahle trying to compile a very small collection.
monoplizing? (Score:2, Funny)
what's open? (Score:5, Funny)
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Some has to do it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Some has to do it (Score:4, Interesting)
/Agreed.
None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves. I'm guessing they didn't think there was any money in it. Now that Google is doing it, all they see is an opportunity to take a shot at their competitor in other markets.
Note the wording of the writeup: "could make Google the main source". Not the only source.
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None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves.
Nobody wants to go up against the G alone, i mean they can fuck with your pagerank then how will people find your website!
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If Google diddles your page rank, you're probably just totally Bing-ed!
Ya know, I don't recall ever seeing an advertisement on television for Google products. Google is just so good, people talk about them, and everyone starts using them. I've not even seen an advert for their out of print books - it's just viral on the net.
Bing? Why do I need 127 commercials on my television to tell me how good Bing is? Hmmmmm.
Anyway - back on subject. Let them form their little alliance. People won't notice anyway.
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The ad program was to make sure you knew what Bing! was, not to make sure you use it. They obviously succeeded (though you are likely someone who would have encountered it anyway).
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Fred: Hey you here about this new bing thing?
Tom: Yeah, i saw an ad for it last night.
Fred: So what is it?
Tom: Meh, its just some new way to google stuff!
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Sure, Google has a great brand when it comes to internet search. That doesn't mean Microsoft will be unable to make money providing a similar service (who knows if that will happen or not, but Kleenex and Bandaids both have competitors that must be making some money, even if they supply a generic, watered down alternative).
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Why won't they mess with your page rank?
Easy! If they did start with messing with the page ranking they would be perceived (correctly) as not being impartial. If they loose their aura of impartiality they loose everything. People will start to look for a better search engine.
Re:Some has to do it (Score:4, Insightful)
None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves.
Do what themselves? Get sued and settle?
I don't think that anyone would object if terms of the settlement were universally applied to everyone - so that e.g. Amazon could also go pay some reasonable fee to provide out-of-print books, and compete with Google. But as it is, it's clearly not a level playing field anymore.
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Thank you for being at least one person who has a clue in this discussion.
I swear, if Google supported something and Microsoft protested it - it wouldn't matter what that something was, Slashdot would fall all over themselves to explain how it was a Good Thing and Microsoft was By Definition Wrong.
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If Google does something and MS protests it, I'll at least consider that Google was probably doing something good.
In this case I've got a *bit* more information, so I'm willing to consider that MS might, just barely possibly, be on the correct side for a change, provided that it has nothing to do with the wording of ant settlement.
Google definitely isn't all good, and I'm not at all pleased with their exclusive right to out of print books. This doesn't mean that I trust any group with MS as a component to
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And that's the constant non-strategy here. Google does something that no one else thought of, or at least no one else was capable or willing to dump resources into, becomes the early favorite, and all of a sudden, it's "hey they're monopolizing this, they're evil, let's gang up and stop 'em!"
But that's the nature of competition, and being the first one out of the gate doesn't always mean you're the first one across the finish line. Still, my advice to anyone getting into bed with those bastards in Redmond
Re:Some has to do it (Score:4, Insightful)
Google's attitude to copyright is 'infringe and pay up if we're caught'. They are not pushing for copyright reform, they are just pushing for Google to get better terms than everyone else.
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If these companies are the only ones with the ability to serve most of the world catalog of books, then we will all be the poorer for it.
Freedom requires that out of copyright books and older books whose legal status is unclear (which is what we're talking about) be scannable/distributable by everyone, or else by no-one.
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Freedom requires that out of copyright books and older books whose legal status is unclear (which is what we're talking about) be scannable/distributable by everyone, or else by no-one.
Thats are really idiotic statement. I'd rather have restricted access to a resource than none at all. Your little idealistic thought would be great in a world where the books could digitize themselves at no cost or effort to anyone. That is not the case and the books in question are still protected by copyright, which by definition prevents them from being 'scannable/distributable by everyone'. Are you telling me you never access any copyrighted material because copyright restricts your "freedom requirement
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I'd rather have competition. If there cannot be competition because of the law, then the law should be changed, or there should be no access until the pressure builds to change the laws.
Q: How does one produce a digital copy of a book?
A: One person scans the book, an
Re:Some has to do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that investing money and energy implies quality. Google's scanned books are very low quality, as a matter of fact. If you'd like to see good quality scans, try pointing your browser at the Center for Retrospective Digitization of Goettingen University [uni-goettingen.de] for example.
The problem though isn't money or energy for scanning, there's plenty of that around. The problem is legal, as in Google have an exclusive agreement with the American Author's Guild, so others are not allowed to play. That's the problem here.
Maybe you believe in capitalism? In that case, don't forget that every time some one company has an exclusive right to exploit a resource, it inevitably leads to low quality, expensive junk passed off as gold.
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There's no obvious way for others to follow.
The only suggestion that I've heard is to engage in wholesale violation of the law, get sued, and then strike the same deal. It *might* work. OTOH, if it did I bet the suit against them would be bankrolled by Google, and so the terms they ended up with wouldn't be nearly as decent.
So, effectively, Google has a legal monopoly. A monopoly which there is no obvious way to overcome, other than waiting for the copyrights to expire. (And Google's digitization and cl
Information/Knowledge is power... (Score:1)
The more information you have, the more powerful you are.
Plain and simple... Google wanting to quantify everything from Planet Earth (Google Earth), to the Internet (this includes indexing all sites including wikipedia which is a massive store house of human Knowledge ).
You can then govern this knowledge how you like... Google HAS worked with the US government in regards to Terrorists and definetely the horrible child porn... do you think Google did so without a 'Fee'? At least Administrative fees.
Google if
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A-fucking-men.
When Google goes evil, not if, they are going to make Emperor Palpatine look like Barak Obama by comparision. It's going to be apocalyptic. Companies, industries and even nations are going to feel the weight of all their own secrets and knowledge crushing down upon them as it Google squashes all around it into an easily indexed pulp. We are going to see Google Private Eye franchises, Google protectio
Day by day old works fade away (Score:5, Interesting)
Their wealth abandoned and forgotten until the last copy is lost. Each was once a treasure, each contains something unique that once lost is gone forever. Who knows what nuggets of wisdom once enshrined in print might enlighten, inform, inspire or entertain a new generation? Nobody knows. We do know from dangling references in works of historical importance that a great deal has always been lost. Amazon knows that if people continue to have access to old books, they won't buy as many new ones. Microsoft knows that they must fight the Google on every front from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Yahoo, well, we all know why they're following Microsoft in this. And so this vile crew set their goal not to do it better but to prevent this service to mankind.
Google's effort fights the loss. It struggles to retain as much as possible against the inevitable creep of time. It's great, in my mind, that this goal even occurred to them. If some others want to compete in this worthy cause they should do so. But to fight against it is evil: not potential evil, but actual and active evil.
Count me with the people who don't see the Internet Archive's angle in this. It's basically taking their "archive everything" web idea and applying it to dead tree based data. If preserving the drunken mumblings of every blogger is important, surely preventing the loss of the writings of Arnold J. Toynbee and the host of others like him must be more so. Not everything worth preserving has been published on the Internet. Yet.
Re:Information/Knowledge is power... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're the second person to post some variation on the 'knowledge is power, and some people want to control that power' theme, and I just wanted to add that there's some real, specific reasons this applies at the present time to out of print books, for those who may think the meme is a little paranoid.
A few weeks ago, I read a book on higher dimensional geometry (Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension - by Rudolph v. B. Rucker). It was published in 1977 in a cheap Dover paperback edition. In the back, there's references to a large number of books and papers on Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and abstract math, by some of the most famous names of 20th century physics (Einstein, Wheeler, Hawking, Everett, Minkowski, etc.) A tremendous number of these turn out to be out of print and unavailable through Amazon or other common sources. In one case, I was offered a copy of one work for over 300 dollars.
There are also a lot of books on the 'occult' side of higher dimensions in the references. Rucker isn't pushing an esoteric knowledge angle - He quotes from several of these, but he's often very critical of the misinterpretations of science found in them, and while he sees some interesting features in the works of people like P. D. Ouspensky or J. W. Dunne, he comes down rather harder on Carlos Castaneda. A little checking on these found a surprising number of them were in print or available online at low costs, and most of the rest were being offered free online from various occult groups websites.
What all this implies is left as an exercise for the astute reader. One example does not, by itself, make much of a trend, but it would be interesting if other such cases exist.
.
Double-take (Score:1)
Of course, whenever there is a threat to the free market, we can always count on Microsoft to step up, the fearless defender of liberty and champion of the people.
Oh, wait...
Not sure that I would call them tech giants (Score:1, Insightful)
Yahoo has NEVER had any real decent tech that it developed. For example, yahoo made heavy use of Perl and BSD.
Same for Amazon.
All have ridden on the coattails of real giants.
Mod away your fan bois.
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But I do agree with you about Yahoo! and Amazon, they were the hype companies of the '90s and they're still riding that inertia. Yeah, some of Amazon's business practices are certainly innovative (inventory management comes to mind), but a "giant"? No.
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If you mean "potentially patent encumbered time bombs" then you'd be correct.
A genuine question (Score:2)
Re:A genuine question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A genuine question (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google decides that they don't want you reading some book for whatever reason, then you're shit out of luck unless you've got a hard copy of it.
So.. kinda like if Google did nothing?
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So.. kinda like if Google did nothing?
No, not kinda like that. The comparison being made was having a single, commercial organization have sole control, versus a (presumably) non-commercial organization composed of or otherwise beholden to a group of commercial organizations. Google does deserve some "first mover" credit, but so does most any company that establishes a monopoly early on. The issue being raised is the potential for them to abuse their sole provider status for these works and the desire to ameliorate that by spreading the respon
Re:Another perspective (Score:2)
It's not a matter of "as if Google did nothing" - it's a matter of, "because Google did something, neither I nor anyone can to it too." Google has become a gatekeeper. Where else have we seen this before? Ever heard of Lexis Nexis? It's a service that gives you access to the documents associated with legal proceedings all across the country. For a fee, that is. In other words, they've taken public property and cornered the market on a particular method of distribution. So if you want it, you have to do thin
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Google in no way prevents anyone else from doing this, Copyright and authors/publishers prevent anyone else from doing this.
This is providing more access than before, not less.
I'm all for it. (Score:2, Insightful)
University all access passes for their libraries and students.
Access to orphan books.
Easy for authors to claim rights and be compensated.
Easy reading on computers, mobile devices, and e-readers.
If you guys can accomplish all this as quickly and completely as Google will, I'll support you.
Re:I'm all for it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm all for an Open Alliance as opposed to a closed one, but I want what Google is offering.
University all access passes for their libraries and students.
Access to orphan books.
Easy for authors to claim rights and be compensated.
Easy reading on computers, mobile devices, and e-readers.
If you guys can accomplish all this as quickly and completely as Google will, I'll support you.
What I want here is for everyone to have the ability to pay fees and provide access to all those things the same way Google can do it now. It really is a very good thing they're doing, but I don't see why they should be the only ones legally able to do it.
If after that happens, Google is still the only one actually doing it - or if they're the ones doing it best (which is quite likely - where Google starts first, it's usually hard to beat them) - I don't mind. The free market will settle it there. But let it be free first.
Reference farm. (Score:1)
The Internet Archive has been fighting this (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet Archive has been fighting this, but not to prevent access to out of print books. They want get the same deal as Google - the right to redistribute out of print books unless the author/publisher opts out. What they object to is that the current deal is structured to give Google essentially exclusive rights to charge for access to out of print books. Libraries get one (1) terminal allowed to access the books for free; everything else goes behind a Google paywall.
This is really a legal scheme to make copyright opt-in again, instead of opt-out. Before various revisions to US copyright law, you had to register copyrights and renew them to keep them in force. So out of print stuff slipped easily into the public domain. Under current law, most material is locked up by copyright, even if nobody cares.
Article about the subject from Berkeley Law Prof (Score:4, Interesting)
In the short run, the Google Book Search settlement will unquestionably bring about greater access to books collected by major research libraries over the years. But it is very worrisome that this agreement, which was negotiated in secret by Google and a few lawyers working for the Authors Guild and AAP (who will, by the way, get up to $45.5 million in fees for their work on the settlement--more than all of the authors combined!), will create two complementary monopolies with exclusive rights over a research corpus of this magnitude. Monopolies are prone to engage in many abuses.
The Book Search agreement is not really a settlement of a dispute over whether scanning books to index them is fair use. It is a major restructuring of the book industry's future without meaningful government oversight. The market for digitized orphan books could be competitive, but will not be if this settlement is approved as is.
The sooner google books is retired the better (Score:1, Insightful)
What is the point of google books really?
They dont make any free books freely available and only link to "buy this now" even for books and scans that are public domain globally.
I can seriously not find any books on google books that are available freely that are published prior to ca 1830. Perhaps 1830 is the cutoff when their "I sell public domain books for profit" partners have agreed on with google?
For example this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9zuFXqw12hUC&q=strindberg&dq=strindberg&
Where's my "-1, Ignorant" mod choice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I will not attack your spelling, grammar, or punctuation in this post. It would waste even more of my readers' time, and be no challenge whatsoever. Besides, I'm surprised I'm bothering to respond to an AC at all, but I wanted desperately to clear up your misinformation.
My rebuttal of your post follows.
Firstly, a link is ridiculously simple to create, and greatly increases your chance of actually having the reader follow your browsing trail of breadcrumbs. Here, let me show you:
http://books.goog [google.com]
bla bla (Score:2)
Here is some thing construtive from Google Books Strindbergs books in Swedish [google.com] and all books in any language [google.com]
Thing is Strindberg died 1912 nothing significant can have been added since then. The problem is that we can't access a book that should be available, and it's unclear how to get access to it. As you say you don't care about what language it is, and that's one of the problems it's hard for Google to handle non english books.
Re: (Score:2)
Judging by the way you speak about language, I take it you are a monolingual English speaker and have never considered doing something about that.
A few quick points in rebuttal:
Q: What do you call someone who knows three languages?
A: Trilingual.
Q: What do you call someone who knows two languages?
A: Bilingual.
Q: What do you call someone who knows only one language?
A: American.
Hmm (Score:1)
Google talks, BS walks... (Score:3, Interesting)
Much as I admire Kahle and archive.org, people have been talking about putting libraries online for decades, talking and talking and talking. archive.org has put a lot of good stuff online, but it's a grab-bag. Ditto the Library of Congress. Ditto university libraries. There are many places that offer interesting collections that make fascinating browsing.
But as far as I know, if you have the title of a specific oldish book that you actually need or want to read, there are only two places you can go with any serious likelihood of finding them:
a) Project Gutenberg
b) Google Books
I think Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo should shut up until they've done as much for readers as Project Gutenberg and Google have.
Re:Google talks, BS walks... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo should shut up until they've done as much for readers as Project Gutenberg and Google have.
Commit wholesale copyright infringement and hope that they can get favourable terms from a settlement? Yes, I too wish Microsoft had done this. Given the recent awards for sharing a couple of dozen music tracks, I think, as a member of the class involved in the Google lawsuit, I would have been happy to simply not settle with Microsoft, charge them the minimum statutory damages rate for wilful infringement, bankrupt the company and never have to work again.
On-line Use only! (Score:1)
Somewhere Bill Gates Is Wondering What Happened (Score:3, Insightful)
People used to form alliances to fight Microsoft. Now Microsoft is joining an alliance to fight Google. What is it he wrote in The Road Ahead about death coming swiftly to the market leader?