Google Books Proposed Settlement

Certain corners of the blogosphere are currently abuzz over the proposed settlement between Google, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and individual publishers and authors about Google Books.

For years now I've been torn between support for Google's contention that its book scanning complies with copyright law (because the searches often reveal only "snippets" of the text); and concern with the fact that the digitization of library collections has been outsourced to a major corporation.  The proposed settlement--which must be approved by a court--would solidify Google's role as the nation's main source of digital content. This doesn't feel right, but I'm not sure that libraries as presently constituted are up to the technical challenge of massive scanning.

So I remain conflicted, and need to do a lot more thinking about this.  For now, I simply refer you to some of the excellent blog roundups about the proposed settlement. 

Comments

[Helen]

One word comes to mind: Monopoly.

[Jim C]

Or monoculture.

What no one's mentioned yet-- no downloads allowed of in-copyright material. Even if you buy the book! And limited printing. No remote access unless you're with a university. And public libraries get only ONE terminal, where all you can do is look at the book, and pay a per-page fee for printing.

All in all, it's pretty useless-- not good for serious scholarly work, unless you like taking notes in front of a computer screen. A lot of hype-- and-- worse-- google isn't even as yet adhering to their public domain full-view requirements with the host libraries. They also say in the agreement that they will identify every PD book no matter from when-- but when?

[Marcus]

Thanks for the comments! Jim C, for some reason your comment appeared three times; I pared it down to one.

On one hand, it's not good for a corporation to have responsibility for such an academic task as digital book preservation. On the other hand, who else is rising to the challenge? Google is kind of an obvious whipping boy in these discussions, so I remain torn.