HarperCollins Will Scan Its Own Damn Books... And Pay For It Too

from the so-buzz-off dept

The oddities surrounding the Google Library offering continue. As authors continue to completely misunderstand what they're talking about as they trash the idea, it looks like at least one publisher is trying to do something. HarperCollins has announced that, rather than let Google scan all of their books, they'll scan all of their own books into a digital repository and then let various search engines search off that centralized database. They're apparently willing to spend millions of dollars in their own money to do it, even though Google was going to do it for them for free. HarperCollins' explanation is that by doing it themselves, they'll somehow better protect the authors' rights -- though it's not exactly clear how that works. It seems like a typical response from a content provider -- saying all they need to do is to control every aspect of their content, and everything will be fine. That sort of defeats the purpose. In the meantime, none of the articles on this announcement say whether or not HarperCollins is paying the authors anything extra to do this. Since many of the authors complaining about Google say their complaint is that Google is scanning these books without them getting any additional cash out of it, isn't HarperCollins facing the same issue? Yes, the publisher owns the rights to publish the book, but if the end result is identical, what were the authors complaining about in the first place?
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    nonuser, 12 Dec 2005 @ 7:28pm

    publishers are paranoid...

    but not necessarily crazy. They're wary of letting Google or Yahoo! or Microsoft innovate with their content, because they realize that big money will flow to those who come up with innovative ways of packaging and presenting content, at the expense of those who rely on the old channels of media distribution. Nobody can imagine all the possible ways published works can be analyzed, sliced, and diced to meet consumer demand, but they probably fear that if they don't stop Google now, some of the more marketable portions of their IP may fall into the public domain.

    I agree that a service that uses a full-text search index to tell you that a book called "The Hobbit" matches the words "Frodo Baggins", probably represents fair use of the book. But does anyone think that Google plans to stop there, and not proceed to push the envelope with scanned content?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Andrew Strasser, 12 Dec 2005 @ 9:39pm

    Scans are fine and dandy...

    Still too hard to read. They are getting closer and will continue to. You can't expect everyone to stay dumb forever. Though, I must say our current president and his gas buddies seem to have some master plan that seems to be working. How did it get more expensive to send natural gas through pipelines from our own mountains?

    Totally off subject, but as I said earlier:

    This task seems best suited to a (ahem tax writeoffable) public library type of system.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jake Lockley, 13 Dec 2005 @ 1:57am

    Brilliant!

    The first smart company to come along. The smart companies know Google makes their money off their ability to scan content, write search algorithms, and sell targeted advertising based on those algorithms. The smart companies will protect their data from Google and sell it themselves. Harper Collins is owned by Rupert Murdoch who owns Newscorp, Fox, BSkyB, IGN, Gamespy, MySpace, TVGuide... so needless to say they have the capability to sell their own ads and targeted marketing data.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      giafly, 13 Dec 2005 @ 3:13am

      Re: Brilliant!

      I agree. Also they'll own the copyright on each new digital version and can in effect restart its "copyright clock", whenever they like, by replacing it with an "improved" one.
      This is the same trick as music companies play with "digitally remastered" CDs.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Dec 2005 @ 6:58am

      Re: Brilliant!

      well... HarperCollins said they'll give search engines the ability to search the databases anyway... so, assuming they do scan the entire books, Google will have the same access to the content as before. HarperCollins just gets to say its theirs and not Google's. The only power they'll really have is whether they pull some books out of the database. To me, it sounds like a stupid move. Google would have done it for free while HarperCollins now paid millions to do so. Google is coming out ahead of this. HarperCollins just did all the work for them.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.