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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Print Holds The Presses 134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-pressing-concerns dept.
brokenarmsgordon writes "Google Print, the project launched in December to digitize the entire collections of five major libraries, has been put on hold until November. Google will stop cataloging in-copyright books until November to give publishers time to decide if they would like to participate and to mark which books they want excluded from the index. "
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Google Print Holds The Presses More

Google Print Holds The Presses

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  • copyright issues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by w98 ( 831730 ) * on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:03PM (#13308313) Homepage
    I've always wondered about copyright issues with services like this. Questions were raised, I'm sure, when Amazon started doing their "look inside" service, although I'm pretty sure the text they've scanned is not searchable. Quite a difference from what Google is attempting.

    It will be interesting to see which titles will be available through it once Google Print is ready for prime-time use.

  • Google Blog (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chaotic Spyder ( 896445 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:04PM (#13308319) Homepage
    check out their own blog [blogspace.com]

    It's actually kinda funny..
    That's right: Google won't even scan any book copyright holders ask them not to, even though doing so is perfectly legal. It's as if copyright holders got to dictate what books get placed in libraries. Their short-sighted selfishness will cost us all, depriving us of our heritage in our online Library of Alexandria.

    • Re:Google Blog (Score:3, Insightful)

      by w98 ( 831730 )
      It's as if copyright holders got to dictate what books get placed in libraries

      Well, political correctness sure dictated which books got taken OUT of libraries ...

    • Re:Google Blog (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:08PM (#13308347)
      That's not the actual google blog [blogspot.com]

    • Funnier if google said it (Score:5, Informative)

      by mincognito ( 839071 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:31PM (#13308476)
      From your link: Google Weblog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, Inc.

      Google's actual blog is http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

      From there we have:

      "So now, any and all copyright holders - both Google Print partners and non-partners - can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November."

      So unless told otherwise, Google will assume they have permission to scan copyright work.

    • Re:Google Blog (Score:2, Interesting)

      by xiando ( 770382 )
      Taking on the "Library of Alexandria" is impressive and very bold indeed. I would be happy to give a few of my fingers just to spend a week in the library of Alexandria at the height of it's peek! A huge amount of excellent books were lost when it fell. And THAT is something worth noting: Even though it was huge and glorious and supported by the most powerfull, it fell to the ground and knowledge was lost. Allowing search indexes to cache books is yet another great way of ensuring they will never be lost. A

      • Google Blog-"/." Philantropy. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Support your local library then.
      • Yeah, what would be more useful: you visiting the Library of Alexandria, or an Ancient Egyptian visiting the Library of Congress?

        Equally useless given the language barrier.

        • Dude, didn't you hear? Apple is developing Rosetta now ...

        • Yeah, what would be more useful: you visiting the Library of Alexandria, or an Ancient Egyptian visiting the Library of Congress?

          Equally useless given the language barrier.

          Speak for yourself -- I know ancient Greek, you insensitive clod!

      • . . .supported by the most powerfull. . .

        Well, as it turns out, second most powerful.

        . . .it fell to the ground. . .

        Humpty-Dumpty was pushed.

        . . .spend a week in the library of Alexandria at the height of it's peek!

        Sometimes typos turn out to be wonderful.

        KFG
      • Well until Google ask you to pay for it.

    • Re:Google Blog (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Castar ( 67188 )
      I feel this way about the general reaction to information in the digital age.

      In a matter of years the human race managed to do something extraordinary, and previously unimagined: eliminate scarcity. Now *everyone* can have access to any information, for free or very low cost. This is something that could change everything. Scholars through the ages have dreamed of this.

      But the only thing people can think of is how to lock it up and go back to the way things were before.

      It's as if someone invented the rep
      • if replicators were invented in the current world my bet is that the military would try and take over complete control of thier use before the information on how to make them got too widespread to control.

        replicators would change the world in many ways some of them nice some of them horrid. (imagine good quality high power firearms on demand without the need for a huge factory....)

        back on topic though whilst sooner or later the world will have to adapt to mass communication and freely availible information
        • But the replicators will have safeguards against replicating weapons and *gasp* alcohol!

          One thing that annoyed me about Star Trek is how often the safeguards failed, particularly on the holi-deck. There must've been at least 5 TNG episodes with that theme, you'd think after 2 or 3 failures in a couple of years they'd say "Hmmm, I think our holideck may be defective."

  • Google Print hack? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is old news; it was posted on the Google blog 2 days ago. I am surprised it has taken this long to reach /.

    The real question is whether someone has yet implemented a hack (as described in this K5 post http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/3/7/95844/59875 [kuro5hin.org]

    I am a student, and my reading list for next semester will cost me $1850 (Amazon prices). If anyone has any updates on the 'google print hack' I (and thousands of others like me) will be most appreciative!

    (PS, sorry for posting as AC, but for some reason
    • I think they've changed their system since that article was written (and the author told google about it). I did some fooling with it a couple weeks ago, and found that you could view 2 pages forward/backward from a selected page, with no limit on the total number of pages. However, there are certain pages which will not display (for anybody, regardless of cookie settings, number of pages you've read, etc) in order to prevent someone from reading the entire book.
    • You'd be better off physically stealing the books.

      You'd get in far less trouble.

      Federal felony vs state/local misdemeanor.

      Of course, buying the books used is ethical and (currently, as of my writing this post) legal and will save you quite a bit.

    • I am a student, and my reading list for next semester will cost me $1850 (Amazon prices). If anyone has any updates on the 'google print hack' I (and thousands of others like me) will be most appreciative!

      Your legal options are as follows:

      1. Buy the books from Amazon and suck up the expense.
      2. Buy the books from a used bookstore and suck up a somewhat smaller expense.
      3. Check them out from the university library for the semester. Of course, your books can probably be recalled, and popular books may n

  • Which books to exclude? (Score:3, Funny)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:07PM (#13308344) Homepage Journal
    Why, all of them of course..

    I cant imagine them letting too many of their 'products' become free...
    • The products are for free: They're in the [b]library[/b]. There's not much difference between having a copy available online that lets you search and peruse at your liesure and a hard copy in the library that you can check out as much as you like.
      • In a library you have one purchased copy. You have one person checking it out at a time. Its truly 'borrowing'. You dont have concurrent 'non paying' users like is being proposed by google.

        Not saying its a bad thing and i wish google the best. I just dont see it happening quite like they want, due to greed in corporate society today..

        • Re:Actually, there is a difference (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          due to greed in corporate society today..

          I fail to see how copyright represents 'greed in corporate society today' anymore than it would have fifty years ago when the writers and publishers would have also objected to this kind of thing.

          • Yes you do fail to see (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:55PM (#13309158)
            You fail to see that the copyright periods keep getting lengthened over time, or ask why, or was why it was not made forever in the first place?

            You failed to see whether copyright is necessary to protect the interests of writers, why increasingly unneccessary publishers are asking for more money for cheaper books made on shittier paper.

            You failed to explain why we need basic calculus 17th edition when nothing a schoolboy needs to learn has changed in at least a century.

            You fail to see that most writers, coders, musicicans, actors, etc. get very little because they aren't annointed as the "in flavor" by their corresponding distribution megalith. These distribution chains are far less necessary than ever before, yet they we have never seen such a rampage against fair use, privacy, individual rights as we see today. All driven by your favorite media special interest group.

            you fail to explain why a writer or coder is somehow more deserving than a plumber who cannot write plumbing 1.0 and then sit on his fscking a$$ for the rest of his life. People sitting around doing nothing their whole lives are just as indicitave of "imperfections in the system" as the unemployed poor.

            Try working for a living. Done writing a book or some code? Write some more! If your product is worth it, and you price your code correctly, you will make enough money to support you and your family in non-extravagant way - like the plumber. If your project requires more people, scale up accordingly, but stop looking to retire rich and live the rest of your life like f-ing bobby brown and that crack hoe whitney houston.

            Musicians, Writers, Actors are all the same, they want to hit the f-ing jackpot while the rest of us work our lives to support them. Arguments of utility to society are bullshit. how did brad pitt make my life better than the guy who unplugs the sewer, or the laid off engineer who designed my 802.11 pcb?

            WAAAY TOO MANY creative types worship this jackpot mentality, thinking only about the riches they will win if they join the system. but most who swing for the fences miss and get nothing. How is that different than playing lotto?

            Copyrights, patents, IPOs, etc. are not for regular people, they are for publishers, producers, lawyers, Wall Street types, and other parasites who spend their time getting between you and your customer while you spend your time working. Why let them? Is it because your reach exceeds your grasp?

            Stop fighting their battle against individual rights for them. Stop helping them to plant spy chips in your DVD player and computer, "to keep you honest".Stop letting them sell you perfectly good hardware with broken software that is used to pull you by the nose where they want you to go. Stop helping them lobby for media taxes and keeping you from looking at your movie on the OS you choose.

            In short, just STFU you pompous a$$.

            "due to greed in corporate society today..

            I fail to see how copyright represents 'greed in corporate society today' anymore than it would have fifty years ago when the writers and publishers would have also objected to this kind of thing."
            • And my Mod points just expired.... DAMN. Well said.
            • What a great argument! If I had mod points this post would get them for sure.

              It's not often you come across a great /. post like this, that puts it so simply.

              My Hat's off to you sir/madam.

              And in the spirit of it. I'm going to take a copy and shove it in the face of the next a$$ that tries to defend any money/reward for nothing princple! I just wish I could attribute it to some one. Sorry AC.
            • For the most part, I agree with you. However, for some of the larger projects, it's hard to recoup 100 man-years worth of work in one sale. If it took your team of twenty people 5 years to write a software X, it makes more sense to try to make that money back (plus some profit, of course) by charging thousands of people who want to use it, rather than finding one sponsor willing to pay for it.

              Personally, I don't believe the government should pass laws protecting such a system, any more than the government
            • Um, what? First a writer IS more important than a plumber who can't write. Plumb a man's pipes and he can shit until it gets clogged again. Teach a man to plumb, and he'll clean his own pipes for the rest of his life. Second, you are implying that musicians, writers and actors don't work for a living, and that you somehow prop up their useless lives. The reality is musicians, writers and actors are among the hardest working people in the world. Music, tv, movies and books are sometimes the only things
            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Musicians, Writers, Actors are all the same, they want to hit the f-ing jackpot while the rest of us work our lives to support them.

              There exists at the very least two groups among professional writers, or indeed most creative types. There are those pursuing that flighty mistress fame and her cousin fortune. However the vast majority of professional "creative types" lure in obscurity. Writers that are only published in obscure literary journals and read only be their own kind. There is an antagonistic
            • Man, I wish you logged in to post, 'cause I'd like to friend ya.
        • In a library you have one purchased copy. You have one person checking it out at a time. Its truly 'borrowing'. You dont have concurrent 'non paying' users like is being proposed by google.

          You and three friends walk into your local library, pick up a book, set it on the table, and all four of you begin reading it simultaneously, turning the page only when all four of you are done. Think the librarian will rush over and throw you all out?

          Not unless you smell bad or are naked or something.
      • Well, you have to return library books at some point so the idea is that if you like/need a book enough you will buy your own copy. If you could read most books on the internet then the authers and publishers wouldn't make any money. I definately wouldn't have bought any books for uni work if I could read them online...

  • whaaa..? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Solder Fumes ( 797270 )
    I thought you had to HAVE PERMISSION to copy copyrighted materials, not specifically FORBIDDEN to copy a specific book.

    • Re:whaaa..? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 )
      Yeah, just like they have to ask permission for any website they want to crawl and add to their index.

      Or just like a library has to obtain permission from the publisher to add a book to its collection.

      • Re:whaaa..? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Libraries don't duplicate the books in their collections and make the duplicates available for distribution.
    • This proves once again that money and power equals more money an power over the law even.

      If you or I were to scan books and offer them online we'd be hung out to dry by lawyers. But Google has money, and lawyers, and thus they can do whatever is profitable for them and their investers. It the way nature/ I mean the free market intended capitalism to work. If you have more money, you win nearly every time.

  • Google has the same right to scan books as the web (Score:4, Insightful)

    by VidEdit ( 703021 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:16PM (#13308387)
    Which means that either Google doesn't have the right to scan the web or it does have the right to scan books. Either way, both websites and books are copyright by the same laws and google downloads full copies to its servers to make them searchable for its commercial gain.

    Perhaps it is the tremendous usefulness of Google that has kept it from dying underneath an avalanche of lawsuits for its downloading of websites, but whatever the case Google is a company that uses other people's copyrighted material for commercial gain.

    Is it fair use? It is to me, but I think downloading the entirety of a commercial work on an opt out basis is not fair use under the historical legal of fair use in the US.
    • Good point. But sooner or later we're going to have to decide what is and isn't open to us all. So far no-one has come up with an idea that makes everyone happy.
    • They do have a right to scan books that they own, but they don't have a right to copy all of a libraries' book, nor do they have the right to distribute (AKA show to you) any pages from these books. Also it would be a likely copyright violation if they bought tons of books scanned them and the sold them.
      • "They do have a right to scan books that they own, but they don't have a right to copy all of a libraries' book, nor do they have the right to distribute (AKA show to you) any pages from these books."

        That is an interesting distinction, using the idea that you have a "fair use" right to change the format and/or copy a work you own for your own use, but it would leave open the possibility that it could scan a library's books on the library's behalf.

        Next would come the question of if you can use copyrighted ma
        • but it would leave open the possibility that it could scan a library's books on the library's behalf.

          That's precisely what Google is doing... Furthermore, it's consistent with what the Library of Congress (and, I presume, it's British equivalents) was intended for

          As for Copyright infringement, it gets a bit more interesting. If Google manages to make it really difficult for anybody to bulk-grab entire books (or large proportions of them), and it turns out that being in the database increases sales of the

      • They don't own my website either, but they have the right to copy it. Same deal as with the library.

        Your fair-use rights to a work are no different when you check the book out of a library as when you buy it.. when it's in your posession, the same rules apply.

      • ...but they don't have a right to copy all of a libraries' book, nor do they have the right to distribute (AKA show to you) any pages from these books

        I guess that means that the Google Cache [66.102.7.104] and the Wayback Machine [archive.org] are illegal.

        • They are potential copyright violations that the copyright owner's could sue over. That is why the Wayback Machine retroactively respects robots.txt. If they deal with it very quickly the copyright holder has no real reason to sue. Also Brewster (Founder of the Internet Archive) will pretty much take anything down that there is any question about. It helps that archive.org doesn't collect any ad revenue, or charge for the archive use.

    • Which means that either Google doesn't have the right to scan the web or it does have the right to scan books.

      Yes, AFAIK that is accurate: Google does have the right both to scan the web and to scan the books. Google is not suspending the scanning of copyrighted books because it's against the law; they appear to be doing so as a kind of "good faith" gesture towards publishers. It appears to be entirely legal for Google to scan copyrighted books on behalf of libraries that own the books (a lot of people s

    • One might argue that when a copyright owner puts a work on the Web, they are intentionally making it available to the public, and this produces an implied license to copy the work for purposes of displaying it (e.g. in a user's browser), and to index it for purposes of supporting the search technology that allows users to find the page in the first place.

      This might be different with books, where the copyright owner's expectations are different.

    • > I think downloading the entirety of a commercial
      > work on an opt out basis is not fair use under the > historical legal of fair use in the US.

      Maybe, maybe not. Remember the world's bigger than the US, and different laws may apply in other countries.
  • It seems that a persuasive argument that is being advanced by the "copyright holders" (and gosh, "copyright" holders and "extenders" like Disney make me want to puke) is that Google is going to be making money selling contextual advertising based on content from these scanned books .. but has not yet promised to share any of these monies with the copyright holders ...

    It's the money, stupid.

  • I didn't want any more people reading through my diary.

  • publishers' heads are gonna explode (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Our precious, precious books, we aren't gonna let those evil copyright pirates just digitize them and advertise them for free to billions of people. No, we are not. We are rather going to spend many millions of dollars each year to advertise our books ourselves. Yeah, those superbowl ads for the latest critical edition of Hamlet or a historical analysis of Islam, those are gonna rake in the millions. Right.

  • Help make your voice heard... (Score:5, Informative)

    by IanDanforth ( 753892 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:30PM (#13308470)
    Publishers who refuse to participate should be punished. While I respect their right to protect their property I do not respect their lack of foresight nor do I appreciate the damage they do to the free exchange of ideas by artificially limiting access to these valuable resources. Take the time to write to your favorite publishers and let them know that you support the Google Print project and will vote with your dollars for those publishers who do. Here is contact information for three of my favorite publishers.

    Tor Books

    E-mail: inquiries@tor.com

    Fax: (212) 388-0191

    Dead Tree:

    Tor Books
    175 Fifth Avenue
    New York NY 10010.

    Perseus Books Group

    2300 Chestnut Street
    Philadelphia, PA 19103
    Phone: 800-371-1669
    Fax: 800-453-2884
    Email: perseus.orders@perseusbooks.com

    http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/contact_u s.jsp [perseusbooksgroup.com]

    Random House

    customerservice@randomhouse.com

    Random House, Inc.
    1745 Broadway
    New York, NY 10019
    Phone: (212) 782-9000

    http://www.randomhouse.com/about/contact.html [randomhouse.com]
    • By asking them to publish their books for free, so that Google can make money off of advertising on someone else's back... that already is voting with your wallet. They've just been deprived of much of their earnings.

      Writing to these publishers won't do any good. You're not giving them any better alternatives.
      • publish their books for free

        Say what? Nobody is making anything free here. You can search for the text of a book and see what book it was in, so lets say I remembered some part of a book I read as a kid (say, about some kid who found a box that let him travel between worlds in certain places ("windows" may have been the term) and control his time relative to the time in the worlds he came to, and used that to end a war between humans and aliens by taking all the blasters from the aliens while he had time
      • Try again, The Baen Free Library [baen.com] is a perfect example. FREE copies of books available online, and their sales do nothing but go up when they get added there.

    • Google should set the Page Rank of every web page under the control of any publisher who refuses to allow their works into Google Print to zero.

      After all, if they hurt Google, Google is under no obligation to make it so their site appears before page 800 in the search results.

    • I like most books I find by Tor and Random House, but I haven't heard of Perseus - could you recommend some good books they have published?

  • funny (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:30PM (#13308471)
    It is funny how the rules for print on the web seem different than the rules for print on paper, even though there is no legal difference between them (IANAL). Hopefully, people will figure out these copyright issues and Google be able to finish doing what is good for consumers.

  • Bad that Copyright takes so long to expire (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xiando ( 770382 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @07:31PM (#13308477) Homepage Journal
    The ideal library, obviously, would be every book ever written neatly indexed and available on-line at Wiki-type sites or dedicated sites, searchable by Google. Knowledge should belong to humanity, it should be among the commons like clean air. Authors obviously tremble with fear of the idea of any and every book being available to anyone for free, for it could potentially cut the revenue they are currently earning on humanity's mass-murder of trees. This destruction must and should stop, moving literature on-line is only a natural step toward a sustain able development.
    • The ideal library, obviously, would be every book ever written neatly indexed and available on-line at Wiki-type sites or dedicated sites, searchable by Google.

      It should also be on RAID storage, and "someone else" should pay for it...

    • Paper is largely made from fast growing plantation trees and is, for the most part, 'sustainable'. Deforestation mostly occurs when people want to farm a piece of land.
  • Why not not give permission to let google scan their copyrighted works. Wait until they show up on google scholar, and THEN sue google. Ka Ching. Silly copyright holders.
  • Google Print will, by default [google.com], include excerpts from copyrighted works if they can get their hands on it.

    It's kind of sad that you really have to be in tune with the electronic world to know that fairly soon your books are getting copy & pasted into a public company's database. Hopefully Google's actually attempting to get the word out about this service to as many publishers as possible. A web page, blog entries, slashdottings, even a press release aren't good enough for the partly unwired publishe

  • Only Project Gutenberg is delivering. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @08:03PM (#13308653) Homepage
    Hah. I'm not surprised. I never believed this would really happen.

    Remember Al Gore talking about digitizing the Library of Congress so that a little girl in Carthage Tennessee would have access to books? That never happened either.

    Al Gore talks big and the Library of Congress never delivers.

    Google talks big and doesn't deliver.

    And meanwhile, eccentric Michael Hart and his wild, impractical idealists digitize book after book after book.

    About half the books on the Net, as indexed by the UPenn online books page [upenn.edu] were digitized by Project Gutenberg.

    Hart drives all the eBook mavens crazy. He does everything wrong. He doesn't use Open EBook markup. He doesn't worry about conforming PG texts to authoritative academic editions. He doesn't posture.

    All he does is get the job done.
  • Why not allow Google to scan book content, but embed advertising inside the scans. Sort of like product placement that movie companies use. Works for Google, could work for publishing houses?
  • I don't mean to sound paranoid or to cry wolf, but the way Google is going really makes it seem scary how much info they control. Remember that "Googlezon" flash animation about the Google Corp. taking over the world? Google seems to be heading there... with all this info in their control, it seems like they have or will have a very firm control over what information people see. Look at the way they treated CNET; sure CNET maybe did do a little poor publishing, but they shouldn't be treated so immaturely:
    • So tell me, just how much information does Google "control?" Yahoo recently announced that they have indexed more information on the web than Google so why aren't you whining about them? Or do you really thing Google is controlling information, do you really think the CEO is going through each index web page and saying "no, I don't want the public to see this page?" Get real, they use a very intelligent algorithm for doing context-sensitive searching to try the best it can to return the sites that are mo
      • Yes, you're right. I would rather, however, that *several* search companies comprise the backbone of the internet rather than one single one upon which everyone will become dependent on. My point was that when everyone becomes dependent on this one company, there will be trouble. So, Yahoo being in there is GREAT. I hope MSN jumps into there soon too at that level.

        Yes, you're right, when adults do it they *do* stick to it. And adults *do* do it.
  • Maybe in the near future we will see some sort of robots.txt [robotstxt.org] page at the start of every book.
    That would be a solution publishers could use.

    • Maybe in the near future we will see some sort of robots.txt page at the start of every book.
      That would be a solution publishers could use.

      Yeah, maybe it could say something like "All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers."

      Oh wait, this one already does!
  • So who will be the first to figure out an easy way to recover whole books using enough google print keyword searches, thereby obtaining entire copies of books for free.
    • Well, the idea writes itself:

      Write a container for the browser. Every time Google serves up pages from a book, upload those pages to FreeNet, and also modify an index (use FreeNetdb, if there is such a thing?) containing the book name and page number(s). Once all the pages are there, it'll mark the book as complete.

      Once enough people install the container and do some searches, Google will have served entire books into the public domain.

      It would be difficult for them to detect, as well, since the sea

  • I am *shocked* that a public corporation would be more interested in shareholder value than preserving information.
    • Oh wait, they did [pcworld.com] remove sources from Google News because newspapers complained....
    • Oh wait, they did [slashdot.org] remove search results because of DMCA takedown notices....

    On second thought, maybe it's not that shocking. Maybe that's why I predicted this in June [lisnews.com] and April [lisnews.com]....

  • Google isn't doing this right (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Everyman ( 197621 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:33PM (#13309073) Homepage
    For me, the issue is that Google, a rich corporation, has talked some libraries into providing access to their collections, even though the library is not the rights holder for the copyrighted works they own. The library that is most eager to let Google scan everything is the University of Michigan, a public institution.

    The contract with U.Michigan was confidential until they posted it in response to a request I filed under Michigan's freedom of information law. Google gets to scan everything, and U.Michigan gets a copy of the scanned files. However, U.Michigan is not able to do anything with their copies except to offer it on their own website, assuming that they take measures to prevent excessive downloading and automated crawling.

    By way of contrast, Google gets to do anything it wants with its copies, forever, and that includes selling it to partners, or passing them along to any successor of Google. They will show ads for where to buy copies of out-of-print books. The entire book will be scanned, but only snippets will be shown surrounding the search term for books that are in copyright. With this latest announcement, they say that they will not show sponsored links unless the publisher agrees to join in the Google Print program.

    Google considers anything published after 1922 to be copyrighted, except for government documents that had no copyright to begin with. Now they are inviting publishers to opt-in to their Print program, so that more than snippets can be displayed, and the publisher can get a cut of the sponsored links that are clicked on.

    But you have to ask yourself, how many books that were published since 1922 are represented by current publishers who are aware of Google's plans and inclined to respond to Google's invitation to opt-in or opt-out? Consider that many publishers are no longer the rights holder once a book goes out of print, as contracts often stipulate that the copyright then reverts to the author. When Google talks about allowing publishers to opt-in to the Print program, or opt-out of the scanning, my guess is that we're talking about less than 20 percent of all copyrighted material that Google plans to grab.

    The other 80 percent will be grabbed by Google without the "express consent" of the rights holder that is required by copyright law, usually with the rights holder not even being aware that an opt-out is available from Google. This is what Google has its eyes on, but it's not what they want you to think about when considering this issue. The used-book purchase links alone will be a cash cow for this 80 percent. Their statement that they will not show sponsored links on pages from copyrighted books that have not opted-in is not enforceable, given that they can chang their mind about that further down the road. It's just not fair to rights holders.

    The proper procedure would be for Google to solicit permission for anything in copyright, and skip that book if there is no response. They should make an arrangement with some entity similar to the Copyright Clearance Center, and invite rights holders to submit permission forms for Google to scan their books. A license fee might be involved, so that these holders can get some compensation. The question of whether ads are allowed, or how much content can be displayed, could be negotiated as part of the license fee. Then if the library has the book, no one will complain when Google scans it. If it doesn't have the book, perhaps the rights holder can make a copy available if Google still wants it.

    That's what Google should be doing, instead of ripping off every rights holder since 1922 by default. There is more on this issue at Google Watch [google-watch.org].

  • two different projects (Score:3, Informative)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Friday August 12, 2005 @09:54PM (#13309152) Homepage
    There are two different projects.

    One is a completely voluntary project, at print.google.com, where publishers send Google hardcopies or PDFs, and Google indexes them. I've participated in this project as a publisher. If you want to see an example of Google print, go to print.google.com [google.com] and type in the search text "Even as great and skeptical a genius as Galileo" (with the quotes). It'll send you to one of my books, and supply you with a link to buy it. (Unlike most of the books in the progran, my books are also CC licensed, so you could actually download the PDF for free if you didn't want a nice bound copy.) The idea is that it's meant to help publishers boost sales: people search in Google, run across your book, and buy it. It's not meant to be a way to read an entire book --- they make it a hassle to do that.

    The other project is completely seperate: to scan and index the contents of some libraries.

    AFAIK, the name "Google Print" was only supposed to refer to the first (opt-in) project.

    So far my experience is that Google Print is a complete bust. I sent them the printed books last year. They scanned them and OCRed them, and then said they'd go live Real Soon Now, which never happened. They sent me an apology note, along with cool little digital clock embedded in a blue doll that says Google on its chest. The apology note said it sould happen Real Soon Now, but that was some time ago. IIRC there was a period of several weeks where I could search in regular google, and and some of the results would be Google Print results from my books, but now they appear to have turned that off. (Try it with the quoted phrase I gave above, and it only gives links to my PDFs and mirrors on other sites, but nothing from Google Print.) Since people don't normally go to print.google.com to search, that means the program basically isn't doing anything right now.

  • It's breaking the law. (Score:2, Informative)

    by 123abc ( 879926 )
    Just because the technology is 'cool' doesn't make it right.

    And just because the law is 'behind' modern technology doesn't make the law wrong.

    This law is there to protect people and allow them to make a living off of publishing written material.

    This could potentially steal a lot of money from the copyright owners. If Google _asks_ for and gets permission from the copyright owner (not assumes it's OK unless told otherwise), then fine, scan the thing and put it online.

    But until Google has the permission of t
  • Have copyright laws been rewritten while we were sleeping?

    Google needs permission from every publisher for each and every book they wish to publish through the web.

    Just waiting N months for complaints doesn't grant G any rights, no matter how long N is.

  • is there a way to buy the books so you can download and print it yourself? I'm sure they can make a lot of profit when offering $1 per book print.
  • A future revenue stream for Google Inc. is to earn a commission on each e-book sold through their website.

    They already have each book scanned (and by the looks of it pretty well formatted) so that turning them into any random e-book format will be a piece of cake.

    They just need a deal, similar to Apple's deal with the music publishing companies. They will just send a cheque in the mail every month for the books sold out of a publishers catalogue.

    And you know what? I would buy books that way. My Sony CLIE is

  • Not indexed - not sold (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Per Abrahamsen ( 1397 ) on Saturday August 13, 2005 @12:17PM (#13311562) Homepage
    If google print becomes a success, it will mean a huge loss in sale if the book is *not* in the index.

    When you make a google print search, you get a box in the left for each hit, with suggestions where you can buy the book.

    Sure, some people will not buy the book because they can get the small part they need from the scanned pages. But a lot more people will only know the boox exists because they find it with Google Print, and if the book is any good, some of them will buy it.

    Books are not like music, most people will prefer the analog version over an online version where you can search your way to scanned extracts.

    I expect very few publishers to "opt-out" of the index.

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