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?
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
publishers are paranoid...
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 thread ]
Scans are fine and dandy...
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 thread ]
Brilliant!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Brilliant!
This is the same trick as music companies play with "digitally remastered" CDs.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Brilliant!
[ link to this | view in thread ]