Googling Literature: The Debate Goes Public - New York Times

Googling Literature: The Debate Goes Public - New York Times:

The publishers and authors are right. Any program of this sort must be 'opt in' for those holding copyrights. Copying a complete book, even though only a small amount of text would be shown in a search result jumps beyond fair use. When one considers Google's extraordinary efforts to create or have others create for them, e.g., Google Base, massive searchable databases, caution is important.

Information does want to be found, but who pays for what is the unanswered question.


"If there was any point of agreement between publishers, authors and Google in a debate Thursday night over the giant Web company's program to digitize the collections of major libraries and allow users to search them online, it seemed to be this: Information does not necessarily want to be free.

Rather, the parties agreed, information wants to be found.

But when it comes to how information will be found and who will share in the profits, the various sides remain far apart - not surprising, perhaps, since the issue has already landed in federal court.

Publishers and authors are suing Google over its Book Search program (formerly called Google Print), which lets users search for terms within volumes. Though users will see only a few lines of text related to the search term, Google is planning to digitize entire copyrighted works from the collections of three university libraries. The publishers and authors contend that without their approval, that is a violation of copyright laws"