University Of Michigan: No Other Choice But To Let Google Scan Books
from the preservation-of-knowledge dept
The debate over the Google Library project to help scan all of the books in various university libraries has quieted down a bit lately, but John Battelle points to a speech from the president of the University of Michigan passionately defending the program to a bunch of book publishers. It's good that the book publishers were willing to invite someone to speak to them who disagrees with their lawsuit against Google, though it's unlikely to have much of a direct impact. Instead of focusing on the (many) ways that Google's project could help publishers and authors, Mary Sue Coleman highlights the mission of expanding knowledge. Unfortunately, this is probably the least likely reason to convince book publishers that they're making a mistake. It certainly sounds good to hear: "This project is about the social good of promoting and sharing knowledge. As a university, we have no other choice but to do this project," but that isn't likely to interest publishers who are focused more on making money. While both of these are mentioned in the speech, the two most important points that publishers need to understand is that (1) this is legal anyway and (2) embracing it allows them to expand their offerings in a number of important ways that can help them make more money.
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sharing is a euphemism for theft
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
what google is doing isn't theft. whoever this foster guy is, he's not thinking clearly. people are just mad cause google will make money off of this and they weren't lucky enough to get in on the IPO, so now they want google to fail. there's no law being broken, no publisher is being hurt, a lot of publishers will be helped, and more people will have access to books... explain how that is a bad thing?
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
... "No duplication/replication of this content,
in whole or in part, is permitted without the
explicit written authorization of ...."
Is google using some kind of library clause to
behave as an internet library? (are their clauses
for that?)
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
If Google links those pages of short excerpts to purchase locations of the indicated books, then all the publishers have to do is have an on-line store that connects to demand print and ship. Wait for the money to roll in.
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so why isn't this theft?
I keep hearing how this could help publishers and authors, how? From what I understand, educational literature (like textbooks and stuff) is already a low margin industry anyway.
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Re: so why isn't this theft?
Ah, it's the second part, the "making them available online" that isn't happening. All they're doing is making an index of the books, just as they make an index of websites. Then, when someone does a search, they display a small portion, which can help people discover new books to buy. If this is illegal, then so is every web search engine.
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Re: so why isn't this theft?
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Re: so why isn't this theft?
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
Book publishers need to know how to adapt to Google, and use their technology to their own benefit. Take online businesses for example--how many small web sites grew overnight because of AdWords? How many community forums grew revenue because of AdSense?
There is no sense in trying to stop technology. So you might as well work with it.
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Re: so why isn't this theft?
Actually, I'm getting my PhD now and I can empathize with the cost of books. But do you understand why? Of course the books are going to be very expensive because publishers aren't producing a whole lot of them, and most of them require significantly more development than say, a fiction work. Once you factor in the cost to pay fact checkers and people to check that questions asked in the book are answerable and appropriate, the cost of a simple bio-chem book is really expensive (and if it's a hot field like bio-chem, more than likely you gotta revise the text every couple of years to stay current). The biggest problem with educational books (on the college level primarily) is that they are a fairly limited run commodity. If every university/college used the same book set, publishers would make lots of money, but that isn't the case, I read somewhere that if 100 colleges/universities use a particular text it's considered a success. Botom line, we're not talking about millions of copies of books being produced, maybe only hundreds in some cases, and they're expensive to make in the first place.
That's what I meant when I said low margin. You're paying for the fact that most of the American population isn't too interested in bio-chem textbooks.
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Re: so why isn't this theft?
OK, that makes more sense. So why are the publishing houses balking? Is it cause Google hasn't proposed the business model to them and signed the contracts before commencing on the scanning? I would think that Google would save itself lots of aggrevation (and make its stock holders happy) to draw up the aggreements with the publishers and end the whole issue now.
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Bookstores
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Fair Use and First Sale Doctrine
Libraries may make limited copies of printed works, but this is not fair use, it is statutory driven. Google is not a library.
Fair use is a pretty slippery doctrine, and it is a doctrine that is fleshed out in the case law. This means that courts, not the legislature, generally say what is and what is not fair use. One factor courts look at is the potential commercialization of the use. Publishers have spoken about creating pay services to do exactly what Google has talked about. In addition, Google receives revenue from their service.
I have to conclude that legally, Google is on pretty shaky ground. Of course, this won't be decided until there is an action brought against them. From a business perspective, I think publishers are being short sighted.
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
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Re: Fair Use and First Sale Doctrine
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No Subject Given
You are wrong. Copying copyrighted material without consent is never legal in this country. Where did you pull that one from?
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Re: sharing is a euphemism for theft
Now, if volumes previously available through the library (or by buying the book), were made available on the net, now you have a single point able to distribute the material to practically everyone on the web. Even if that point of distribution paid the publisher for the copy of the book (the fair use people), does that then give them the right to distribute it to everyone in cyberspace? The publishers would basically be stuck with making virtually no money.
Granted, I now understand that Google is only planning to make "indexes" and "snippets" of books available, which is different, but I can see where the publishers would need some serious reassurance (via contract) that Google doesn't one day decide to just let the whole volume become available.
Finally, fully realizing that my arguement sounds a bit like MPAA or RIAA (whom I don't agree with mostly), I will assert that books are different from music and to a lesser extent movies in how they are used and perhaps the same arguements that sound great for digital distribution of music and movies, aren't so great for a book or reference text.
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Re: No Subject Given
Uh, have you actually read what they're doing? And have you ever heard of fair use?
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buying books
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Re: No Subject Given
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