9 December 2005
Google Print/Google Library
I had mistakenly told a friend that one of the problems with Google's library of scanned books was that they don't provide compensation to the copyright holder. From Search Engine Watch's explanation I'm still a little unclear, but it appears that the issue is that Google doesn't ask permission to reprint the works (or, rather, portions of the works), relying on the umbrella of Fair Use to validate their cause. And yet, the odd point is that Google will still be making money on that Fair Use with ads. Am I missing something here? I've read several articles and still feel that I don't have a full understanding.
Danny Sullivan really misses the mark though, very obstinately, on the difference between indexing Web pages and indexing books. The first point is that Web pages may be copyrighted yet still freely available; books, on the other hand, must be purchased. Even when loaned from a library, the book was purchased and is not being duplicated. It's free to read anyone's copy of a Web page because to view a Web page you must download it and therefor copy it. This brings up the second point that digital copying is different than physical copying. The domain of digital information is different from that of physical information and the two worlds are (once again) colliding. Maybe I'm missing some new paradigm, but I think that Google has to respect the existing model that exists in the physical world while pushing into the new world.
An artifact still has value. Or am I just being old-fashioned?
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