Slashdot Mirror
Publishers Protest Google Library Project
gollum123 writes "A group of academic publishers is challenging Google Inc.'s plan to scan millions of library books into its Internet search engine index, highlighting fears that the ambitious project will violate copyrights and stifle future sales. In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday, the Association of American University Presses described the online search engine's library project as a troubling financial threat to its membership -- 125 nonprofit publishers of academic journals and scholarly books. The university presses depend on books sales and other licensing agreements for most of their revenue, making copyright protections essential to their survival."
My favorite take on the "loss of sales" argument comes from Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing on March 3, 2005:
i s_why_a.html
"When reporters ask me why I give away the full text of my novels online, for free, the day they're available in shops, I tell 'em: "It's about word of mouth. My readers have large social circles of friends whom they never see face to face. Books like Sisters of Ya Ya Sisterhoood became a success because one friend went to another friend and handed her a copy of the book, saying, 'You must read this, it changed my life.' I want to give my readers the same ability, so I have to give them a form of the book that they can 'hand' to their friends over the Internet. Even if it displaces some sales, the most valuable thing an author can get is a personal recommendation, it's the thing that is most likely to sell more copies of my books."
Linky: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/03/wordofmouth_
It's Google Inc. now eh?
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
Our 'money-for-nothing' scheme will dry up.
Shouldnt non-profit people be in favour of this?
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
nuff said
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Why is it that Google is scanning copyright-protected works?
I thought that was flagrantly illegal, and the fines for willful copyright infringement are steep, even for a company with Google's money.
What's going on?
D
Remember, that libraries generally have one copy of a book (sometimes more, but rare) and that a person is borrowing it. So if you read a book at the library and wanted to have your own - you had to buy it. By having all of these publications online, people will have a digital copy of them for free. This *will* hinder book sales. While some people might want the nice hardbound copy - most people will just settle for the digital copy which is just as good.
FOr example, in my life, there are very few books that I have read in digital format that I have bought to have as a hard copy.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
125 nonprofit publishers of academic journals and scholarly books
Everyone together now: Non-profit.
Once again: Non-profit.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"making copyright protections essential to their survival."
The question you really have to ask is: is THEIR survival essential?
Do we really need their services?
Side note: WTF is up with this crap to "confirm you're not a script" that I have to type in...jesus christ it's not like slashdot is giving free email. Man, I remember when you could post as much as you as many times as you want now there's all these ridiculous rules. No wonder I barely read this site anymore.
described the online search engine's library project as a troubling financial threat to its membership
The horror.
Making the texts searchable - provided they only show a small snippet and a reference to the book for the rest - sounds EXACTLY like fair use to me.
Especially for academic papers, where being able to find the reference is critical to advancement of the field, and the citer would have to obtain and read more than the snippet anyhow.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If the journals don't like being published online by google, they will stop publishing, fizzle, and something else will come and replace them...
Now if only the RIAA/MPAA would have the same fate... Google, help me out here!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Honestly, this can be a great financial gain for those publishers, if they get together with Google on how to best select enticing pieces of their copyrighted works in order to drive sales, the academic community will have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If I can get for free at my library I should be able to get it free on my computer.
So if I understand correctly, group of "non-profit" publishers is worried this will have negative effect on their potential profit?
Information wants to be free. No more free rides. If you want to survive then develop a book reader you can use in the bathtub and market it.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Luddites are protesting the installation of machines in factories. They say manual labor is vital for their survival.
Fucking idiots. Instead of working with the industry on a micropayment systems that would allow me to buy books in electronic form at way less than $50 a piece (of which the author is lucky to receive $1) they will sabotage this stuff, and when it finally comes of age three or four years later they'll cite decreased revenues (of course, you morons) and "intellectual property violations".
Dear Association of American University Presses:
Please rename yourself University Presses Association of America so that we may refer to
all evil bastard organizations as *AA.
Thank You!
Personally, I detest having to go to the library, search through often poorly organized books during certain hours only to find I have to come back for them to order it. An Online Library would be perfect. No waits, no returns, no damaged books, able to grab them at home-copy them to my PDA and read. Heck, I'd even pay a decent subscription service fee. What I will not pay is the ridiculous $7-20 for a digital version of a book that sells hardcover, printed, in store for the same price.
We've secretely replaced the Enterprise's dilithium crystals with Folgers crystals. Lets see if they notice.
Although I know it probably won't cover out of print fiction books. I've got at least one book that I can't remember the title/author but could quote enough passages or facts to find it.
How many books could there be about a 1-eyed ex-programmer turned fencing instructor who was the original programmer of a computer made of cloned brain tissue that is the server for a MMRPG but has developed consciousness due to another ex-programmer who, dying of cancer, imprinted himself into the game just before he died. But he died partway through the process and, since he was a wizard in the game, summoned the consciousness of the computer into the game in an attempt to access past "saves" of himself to fill in the blank spots, but botches the spell causing the consciousness of the computer to lock in all the other players in the game as hostages. This causes management to abduct the original programmer and force him to go in to the game, using an unimplemented bard class, and convince the consciousness(who, due to some freudian complications, considers itself female and wants to bone the original programmer) to let everyone go.
And that's just the first couple chapters. Given a chance to do a literal search I'd probably just quote a line the programmer says after realizing he still had root access when faced with a bunch of demons "go to hell go directly to hell do not pass go do not collect 200 credits" plus enough random words to narrow it down a bit(for example, partway through he searches for a set of Katana+Wakizashi that grants wishes and is guarded by a Medusa and that the cancer-programmer/wizard has a tortoise for a familiar).
On the off chance anybody recognizes this book(from the late 80's early 90's I think) I'll give you all my mod points:)
In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday...
Did anyone else do a double take on this? I almost crapped myself (Google fanboy)... "OMG, Google is going to customize my weekdays!"
Saturday will be in Beta 18 months.
Cleaning the net one sed at a time! s/sex/sermons/; s/hot/holy/; s/goats/thebible/; www.holysermonswiththebible.com
Reading a book on computer is an unpleasant annoyance. Most consumers are more than willing to fork out $5-8 for a bound copy. Those cusumers who choose to read rather than exclusivly watch DVDs for entrertainment anyhow.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I guess it depends on what they are scanning. If it is mostly scientific journals used for research it might not infringe on copyrights. If they are scanning the NY Times Bestseller list for public distribution, that would be a huge violation. I have to assume that Google has a team of lawyers looking into every aspect of this project. It would be a very bad business move to be one of the most popular sites on the Internet and provide illegal content.
Maybe they will register googlez.com and start a warez site for this project.
/. ++
How dare Google make information more readily available to the general public while reducing the need to use physical resources at the same time! How dare they!
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
It is interesting to see reaction as Google moves it's search technology into printed matter. The copyright issues are actually somewhat similar. To create a search engine for the internet or for printed matter Google has to *copy* copyrighted material to their servers and the same goes for printed matter.
Technically, to my non-lawyers knowledge, what Google does with the internet is illegal but is granted a free pass, in part because the material on the internet has to be copied via the internet to be viewed at all. Copying the content of books is only slightly different. Unlike the internet, there is no printed equivalent of a "norobots" or "nofollow" tag to automatically ask Google to skip printed matter.
This just needs the right pricing model built.
1) Google charges a small fee to the content consumer to view the entire content and conveys that back to the publisher (perhaps taking a small cut)- publisher does not have to thus pay the costs associated with producing a dead-tree version- all profit. Google also makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to reconstruct the entire content from excerpts (algorithm up to them). Optional/devious: Google makes small changes to the wording/grammar/punctuation of the content in order to trace back to a purchaser in the event of a leak.
2) Google runs AdWords along the side and takes a portion of that as profit and pays the other portion to the publisher.
3) The cost to the consumer to view the content on Google should be less than purchasing the dead-tree version.
4) Profit (for everyone)!
The publishers may have a reasonable issue with Googles intention to copy some copyrighted works. If the project were to limit its accessibility to Public Domain works, the publishers would not be able to legitimately gripe. I suspect that the copyrighted work at issue is such that it is no longer in print & therefore generally unavailable for purchase.
However, a more serious concern is that Congress seems to perpetually insist on extending copyrights to the point that they are virtually perpetual. (I suspect that they are up to about 100 years.) If a publisher has a copyright, but decides that a work should not be in print - it is effectively censored.
This perpetual extension of copyrights (likely soon to be followed by business process patents,- Quick, give me $.05 for viewing this web page;) limites the use of useful works to those whom can pay the entrance fee. Assuming that the works are still in print.
If a publisher has a work that is unavailable (e.g. not in print), but copyrighted then they should have some way to disseminate it before they complain. The perpetual extensions of copyright are an issue that everyone should have their representatives address. (I can't help you. I live in DC, my representative has not voting power on the floor of Congress)
If you want change, you have to speak up.
With the kind of buzz Google would generate by doing this *for* them they should be begging for the amount of exposure they will be getting. As a recent college grad I seem to remember watching Google more intently than say some obsure scholarly journal.
Are these people complaining the ones responsible for the fact that at my university, the only way to get some info about something published in a journal was to log into some arcane heavily protected system and be told that the journal you are looking for is at another university, four stories underground, and protected by forcefields?
Are they the ones that feel that its justified to charge 200 dollars for a 5 dollar-value book ('journal') because they control the distribution... in which case... I hope they DO lose out.
with the scratch these university publishers skim off me (each semester!) they could give Christmas to Ethiopia for a week. Thanks for new minor revisions every year so i don't get anything back for used books!
i have very little sympathy for these crooks.
$
Thats not redundant!
As I creative person I am offended that someone could possibly catch a glimpse of something I've toiled over without giving me shiny gold coins.
.01% - 'artists'
I think we've got to nip this problem in the bud, and pronto! I think the most expedient system would be some sort of coin operated hood that could be welded onto consumer's heads. If you want to see or hear art, you simply need to drop some coins into the mechanism to open the shutter for a set amount of time.
This would mean a constant flow of income that could be distributed to all creative people as follows:
46 % - 'administration'
28 % - Lawyer fees
22 % - car payments
13 % - more lawyer fees
21 % - distribution
12 % - math consultants
8.2% - contingency
The only possible flaw with this plan is that the percentages add up to more than %100 percent, meaning that there would be an actual loss of profit, but I think the 'artist' could kick in an make up for that loss since they started this whole thing.
air and light and time and space
of course universities would hate a freely searchable index ... means they can't sell the 17th edition of "Introductory Number Theory" or something equally trivial [and well covered in the textbooks spanning the last CENTURY]...
... last I checked Calculus hasn't changed that much [specially at the level 1/2 levels] in the last century to require a 2nd edition let alone a 7th.
If you can look up quotes/citations/etc without shelling out for overly expensive dead trees... they'd lose their valuable money pit.
Personally I'm glad to be out of College. Not that I bought the books while I was there [well the ones I could avoid I did]. Even in my community college we had 7th edition level 1 and 2 calculus books
To me "7th edition" says two things. Purposeful re-write and "sloppy editors".
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Like street-sweepers protesting the loss of horse manure to sweep, these publishing houses seem to have trouble following historical trends.
Another way to look at it is that they have missed their first calling, which is to disseminate academic information, by becoming enslaved to the profit they make on a particular method of doing so.
Cynically, perhaps they are afraid that once the bulk of their collections are online people will discover that most of what they publish is rehashed from older work. No, I don't seriously think that.
But I do seriously think that the academic publishing business, like the newspaper business, is transitioning to the Internet.
It's time to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Google makes it extremely clear that they won't be violating copyrights. So what more do these publishers want?
Perhaps they just want to cast a pall of doubt over something that (quite legally) diminishes their reasons for existing.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
People will use this to find a resource, then go to the bookstore or library and BAMO it works, the customer wins finding obscure resources, and the vendor wins with more sales.
Call me naive, but isn't the main mission of a university press to disseminate information as widely as possible? They exist mainly because Penguin and Random House and the like don't see a huge earnings potential in publishing narrowly focussed academic material. Google can be a huge help to academic publishers by helping potential customers locate their material. At the same time, Google will help customers to be more discriminating in their purchases. Academic publishers will need to streamline their operations. They should really hop on the print-on-demand bandwagon so that they print only what they sell.
Coined the word Sabotage. (The story I heard: French workers used to wear wooden shoes called Sabo and put them in the gears of the machines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage )
Of course, the Luddites did the same thing: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite)
Everyone together now: Non-profit.
Once again: Non-profit.
Which doesn't mean they can't charge money for their services in order to support their activities.
So; what *exactly* are you trying to say in that deliberately simplistic manner? That those responsible for putting together such journals should be able to do so on an income of precisely $0?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
are like 100 to 200 dollars per book, this sounds like a good project for people that cannot afford the books.
I am sorry but I feel no pity for the Universities and book publishers. They 'make money' on selling the same recycled crap year after year and calling each one a new edition.
We are watching, every day mind you, more and more unfolding along the lines of "the people" vs. "THE MONEY!!!". Why is this, and what can really be done about it?
I think it's a good thing to ponder. Otherwise, these stories will continue, and the real America will be lost. This was suppose to be a place where we "Let Freedom Ring". Not "Please deposite $100,000.00 to hear the sound of freedom ringing.
Wow, I said that on SLASHDOT, the world will REALLY change now.
I think the key here is that the typical use pattern for academic works is different than for works intended for the general public. Frequently the reader of an academic journal is interested only in a specific fact, and they will often be able to glean this fact from the small amount of context provided in the Google search results. This threatens the revenue model of academic journal publishers, which is a form of bundling, namely, charging the university libraries for the whole journal or for several related journals put out by the same publisher.
I have obtained a copy of the letter! See below.
---
Dear Google,
Your "Google Library" project exploits academic research, funded in many cases by government grants and universities, collected by idealistic students, underpaid postdocs and underappreciated professors.
To turn this sacrosanct copy into a source of easy profit by using your publishing expertise and near-control of the market is a usurpation. Of us. Exploiting academia is OUR job! We totally called it! Before, like, the Internet and shit! No fair no fair NO FAIR!
Sincerely and truly your,
Acadmemic Publishers
Instead of using lawsuits, they should just screen-scrape Google, scrub out the ads and the Google logo and offer the result as a free service.
After that, we can see how Google likes it.
there's no place like ~
highlighting fears that the ambitious project will violate copyrights and stifle future sales.
How about stifiling innovation, education and learning? It would seem that capitalism is at odds with general betterment of humaity.
I'm involved in free distribution of text too (http://www.verbumvanum.org/ and I'm utterly amazed at the attitude even so-called 'non-profit' orgs have.
The whole goddamn IP thing should be abolished, I say. True, copyrights are less worse then patents, but still; it's just not of these times anymore. Just as the feodal system didn't work anymore in the industrial age, so doesn't IP work anymore in the cyberage.
In any case, if the authors gave permission, or, if it is in the public domain (which in first instance would be the case, since they'll start with pre-1920 books, as I've understood), then what the f- are they complaining about.
Maybe they earned money distributing books that were in the public domain? Well, heck, though then. I mean, what, we aren't here to subsidise non-profits, after all, and while I understand they're complaining from their view, it's a free market, after all.
I've been wondering, btw. Why didn't anyone come up with the idea to make one giant liberary, with a system that 'lends' ebooks? After three weeks it can't be used anymore, and it becomes available in the lib repository again. That way, it'll EXACTLY work like a regular lib, bypassing all the 'but they copy my work' whiners.
The longer this crap continues, the longer I'm thinking society should move on, and stimulate a sort of mass-online patronage, or an improved flatfee thingy, like we already have now on many 'blanc' copymedia. This way, we would prevent all those lonesome, poor, starving musicians from a terrible hunger-death, and people could do what they already are doing, but then legal.
The current system has become obsolete; people that don't get that yet, are worse off then Don Quichotte.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
please cmddrtaco stop raping me
In other news, millions of trees around the globe raised their leaves and branches in thunderous applause in praise of the Google project.
I guess the battle is finally on as the days of printed paper medium begin to finally tick down. Like the recording industry, the print industry doesn't quite understand yet that their customers no longer want their products in the old formats. While I personally still like a printed book, I'm enjoying the added portability that digital media is providing. I look forward to the day I can carry my entire library in the palm of my hand, just as I now do with my music collection!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
To quote from an article in Chronicle of Higher Education, reprinted in Prime Palaver #10, Michael Jensen (their director of publishing technologies) said:
// TODO: fix sig
I'm playing a public domain tune on the world's smallest violin...
"In a letter scheduled to be delivered to Google Monday..."
Did anyone else think that Google Monday read this as this was another 'Google Labs' idea? Can't imagine what 'Google Monday' would provide, but still, it's not unreasonable. I remember when everything was being renamed Yahoo*
bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
The university presses depend on books sales and other licensing agreements for most of their revenue, making copyright protections essential to their survival.
I don't think anyone who has been through college is going to feel bad for these guys.
This is the same industry that comes out with a new edition of a book every single year so that your resell value is zero. And if you look, editions 5 and 6 only differ by having different problems in them - the text is virtually unchanged. They just keep pumping out editions every year to make a revenue stream. It's blatant, and for some reason nobody cares.
And it's also a virtual monopoly - these big-book companies are no better behaved than any other monopoly you can name. A good example is the big name bookstore on my campus that fought a legal battle to keep the required book list secret, so that mom and pop bookstores wouldn't know what books to buy, making their competition effectively zero.
They eventually lost, but the fact is they tried. I feel no remorse for any hard times these jerks may be feeling. Here's hoping PDF replaces them all someday.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
but can you bring it to the washroom?
The key is the "small snippets" and how they're given out. TFA didn't say, but I suspect that the questions that they sent to Google concern how Google is going to keep people from coercing Google into giving them the whole book a piece at a time.
It's been done before; some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were first released because somebody reverse-engineered a concordance. One could imagine somebody writing software to pull up part of a book, then search on the last sentenece of each snippet to get it to reveal some more (as context). Repeat and get the whole book.
It might not be all that simple or all that effective, but publishers do have a right to worry about the possibility. It takes a lot of work to publish a book, and it would be nice if Google were able to give them some assurance that it wouldn't become common for people to get the books for free.
Even without that, even publishing small snippets of reference books can be problematic. Sometimes you only want a short snippet of the book at a time, and the rest of the book goes unused. The publisher spends money assembling the whole book, so they want you to pay for all of it (amortizing the cost), or at least use the library's copy (which can be very expensive if they expect to sell only to libraries).
Personally, I'd like to see Google honor a publisher's request not to index a book, the same way google honors the robots.txt file. If they're losing sales that they might otherwise get via Google's free advertising, that's their own lookout.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
.. but I'm too lazy to read all the posts.
After Safari Books online, I bought more books. After iTunes music store, I bought more CDs. Not out of charity, but additional interest.
The texts are available search-only. It's a f'in product catalog for God's sake! You can't read the entire journal online, just find the one that you need to buy!! How much do you want to bet that the publishers heard "digital copy" and panicked before reading (or thinking) any further?
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I wish we had a search engine that specifically had people removing spam and garbage, and hits that were misclassified.
Google could collapse under its own weight. They are moving into so many different directions, and I doubt they will do all very well. They should stick with the food on their plate before ordering more. There eyes are getting to big for their stomachs.
Fix your search engine first. Remove spam. Let the quality links get the highest ranking. They have power to shape the internet.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
If copyrights holders had their way, there would be no libraries. Libraries usually buy one copy of a book and let multiple read it without paying additional royalties to the copyright holder. It is only through the Doctrine of First Sale that libraries are even allowed to do this. Although some academic publishers do make much of their money selling books to libraries, there has always been a somewhat conflicting relationship between libraries and book sellers, who would rather sell lots of copies to individuals than a few to libraries.
Consider the literature involved here. These are scientific works which are probably used more or less as reference material. This isn't a Tom Clancy novel which you sit down and read for hours. This is: "What is a good numerical technique to solve this stiff set of odes?" From an end user perspective, having these books in digital formate is ideal.
-- john
Fortunately, most standards bodies got reality: charging outrageous fees for copies of their publications was horribly cost-ineffective for the industries that they supposedly served; there are other ways to raise those relatively small sums.
Today most standards documents are available online for free. The standards bodies seem to have survived the change. Maybe it's time for academic publishing to do the same.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Finally we get a decent sized company that's mass publishing simple, stripped down information without all the bloat. I love it.
I hope the other large publishers follow suit quickly.
"...making copyright protections essential to their survival.""
That is so wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with their survival as it has not played a real role in publishing profits for centuries(expect for betwixt publishers). Libraries have always provided copyrighted materials to the public free of charge to a limited use. The publishers have relied upon the library as being too bothersome, too far away, too hard to use, etc for their survival. Most people would rather order a book than sift through their local library to try to garner the same material or item. Publishers have depended on that, not the copyright, as books have always been free for the asking.
Now Google is poised to remove a significant portion of the 'library hurdle' that stops most people from using that resource before their local Barnes and Noble retail outlet. That is what they are upset over, not the copyright. The copyright is the only legal paper the have to hang onto and cry into. Therefore they try to raise your ire over that and hope you will miss the real point.
Do you really know anyone that steals books? Do you know anyone who downloads books illegally? Doesn't that sound a bit proposeterous when the same material can be had in an hour or two from your local library? It sure does to me.
As information moves to the electronic format, as most all of it will in the coming years, are we ready and or willing to lose our access to published materials freely? Will information truely become a comodity for the wealthy only too? Shame on the publishers for clouding the issue in such a way. We are not the dumb (are we?).
There are several upsides to books. These generally fall into the look-and-feel or the book business category. I like my books, I do. They just are not all that convenient.
The biggest disadvantage of books and printed materials is search. The best librarian in the world and a stack of books is no match for my desktop search and a folder of PDFs. It simply takes too long to flip thru a book to find a phrase, sentence, or a passage.
I understand the desire to search these materials. Now, I also understand copyright-holders concerns. How about a compromise? Let users Google on a book. Have Google return the paragraph in question, along with the book's title and ISBN.
Searchers can Google on printed materials. Copyright is preserved (one paragraph and appropriate citation is fair use). I'll bet this would even drive book sales (Google could provide a paid link along with the citation.)
My two cents,
J Wolfgang Goerlich
If want an easier/faster way to get the book you can always BUY IT.
The scheme suggested sounds like the hardest/most expesive way to obtain a book.
What's the goal here?
Getting the information out or profiting via control of information?
You'd think that searchable electronic versions of the journals would further the goals that led to researching and writing the papers in the first place. The peer review portion costs nothing, the cost of production of the papers is not borne by the journals. They don't sponsor(in the sense of paying for) the conferences.
All that said, I think most people prefer a hard copy of a paper that they will be using in their research. I know I do. So the journals should still have an audience.
The problem is that the way it's set up now, one must either wait forever for an interlibrary loan or buy the reprints. This impedes research as one must spend a lot of time-money to weed through all the stuff that's not important to ones research in order to uncover 'the good stuff'. Sure, one can join a professional society for a 'discount' on the journals, but this is of no use when one is interested in cross discipline research. The time-money is better spent on actual reading and research than on acquiring tons of paper.
The journals are only delaying the inevetable anyway. On line, peer reviewed, publication is going to happen eventually. It's faster and more people will be able to make use of each others research. Better the journals 'get in on the ground floor' before they become irrelevant(sp?).
RANT Follows
Of course we see control of information on the internet as well. The most frustrating is this assymetrical bandwidth crap that is being used to keep independent producers in their place. Sure, someone can pay for bandwidth for the equivilent of broadcast, i.e. a big fat web server farm, but this is money and time taken away from production (just like the journals above). With symmetrical broadband, distributed distribution of content becomes a reality for music, films, and even computing. i.e. AI or heaven forbid, a distributed google work-a-like. This is the real fight because distributed distribution will eventually make ALL of broadcast irrelevant, including google.
Go google. I'm not approsed to this. Maybe it's because I'm just lazy.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Make universities, and other research corporations, pay for subscriptions to these copyright-dependent journals. Universities make profits from those journals - tuition, corporate R&D, patented research, etc. They should pay their share to support them - if they lose the journals, their profitmaking will be impaired.
--
make install -not war
non-profit means that all profits go right back into the business. they can, in fact must, expand their business. The non-profit part means that their are no owners or CEO's that get more money if the business makes more money. All the money goes back into the services that the company provides. if non-profits weren't allowed to expand, then OSDL's recent announcement that they are going to expand operations in Europe and Asia would be a violation of the law.
my pet machine
The littlest violin is playing for your business model.
Take a look
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'm tempted to say Doctorow was simply feeding a line to the "What's Yours Is Mine" Crowd so those among them with actual disposable income would run down to the bookstore and buy his book.
Doctorow's assertion, of course, is entirely anecdotal. Where are the numbers that might substantiate it?
It defies logic to deny that people who make money selling books will not be harmed if someone else provides free copies of those books. This may be especially true for publishers of specialized and academic books that, by definition, have very small potential audiences.
The publishers should sue Google and Google should be required to pay the publishers each time a publication is accessed via Google.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This is not a real comment. This is only a test. In the event of an actual comment, Microsoft would be flamed, Linux praised and some lame attempt at humor would be made.
This concludes our test.
Isn't it comforting to know that our cultural addictions have reached such a fevered pitch that even non-profit organizations scream about lost revenue when confronted with something that can help people in their field for no appreciable cost to anyone?
I guess the original point of non-profits existing (helping a cause without having to obsess about the money side) went out of style once people heard it gives you tax breaks. I feel better now that non-profit is just another kind of startup that will attack anything that benefits the people at their expense.
I'm glad that they can pay salaries to their workers and themselves just like a normal corporation while I pick up their tax slack. I'm glad they can whine because they'll lose money if their cause is actually fulfilled by someone else and the government will actually step in to put a stop to that obvious injustice.
It's also nice to know that giving and helping people without getting literal cash in return is unthinkably un-American communist terrorism. I sure was getting sick of all that "Love thy brother, share and share alike" BS. Hoarding and expecting people to pay me for everything I (or they) do is much more fun.
All Hail the Maggott Show
I believe that Google originally planned to begin this work with public domain works, which I think would be great. I'd love to see this model work with content that is uncontestably free, then move it into the domain of copy-protected works.
As a music teacher, I've been collecting public domain music texts so that I can build open-source music materials that my students can use, including songs that they can have and keep, etc. They love that everything I give them I compose or derive from a free source. It is time-consuming finding print and online copies of these works, and it will be wonderful once there is a way to centrally find them.
Go Google!
Companies who cry for help when someone makes them obsolete deserve to be made obsolete. I am looking forward to correlating my internet research with hard text works without having to go to the library.
All libraries are not funded equally, and an alternative to driving downtown to my local University library is welcome. If the whole work was going to be posted in it's entirety I could see a legitimate gripe, but if only parts relevant to the search come up, that sounds fine. It may just DRUM UP interest.
This issue will become a serious problem when lightweight, foldable screens become ubiquitous. Portability is the one thing that books and print media have going for it. When digital text media readers become really light and unobtrusive is when I will never look back. Books will go the way of Vinyl, you'll have some hardcore fans, but the mainstream will leave it behind.
Then get ready for printers, typesetters, and Lumberjacks to all cry foul.
I'm a scrip7. I just rerout the image to users allow access to a rerouted pron site. So I can post all day.
All your processing are belong to us.
There's a serious problem here in inviting publishers to submit their material. Publishers seem eager to submit their reprints -- for which they only have copyright over the book's design -- of public domain works. As a result, completely free works are listed in Google Print as "Copyrighted Material" -- in turn, allowing the publisher to misappropriate copyright w/in G. Print over written material they do not have copyright over.
See, for example, The Canterbury Tales in Google Print. This was written in the 1300s. I would very much like to see Penguin's proof of copyright over the works of Chaucer, who died in 1400.
Likewise, see Romeo and Juliet , written by Shakespeare, who died in 1616. Or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , first published in 1819. Clearly no present-day entity has copyright over any of these works. Regardless, the publishers who have submitted their versions of them are able to enforce a 3-page-view limit on them without legal right to do so.
Google Print should be scrapped, and instead, the spotlight shined on Project Gutenberg.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Take the example of East Germany. They published lots of books which were sold for almost nothing. Typical prices were 1/10 to 1/20 of the prices in West Germany. Every possible subject was covered from astrophysics to German classics and gardening. Lots of West Germans flocked to buy East German books because they were so varied and cheap (despite the fact that the printing paper was bad). In East Germany economic efficiency of book publishing was irrelevant, financial losses did not matter, they were covered by the government. This made it possible to publish books addressed to very small audiences; no capitalist publishing house would do that because they would lose money.
It was a glorious time, when culture and science had nothing to do with money. MONEY IS NOT EVERYTHING, CULTURE AND SCIENCE CANNOT BE MEASURED IN MONEY.
Now it is all gone, which makes me sad. We are back in the Dark Ages when money is everything.
Information wants to be free.
All right, if we assume that scientific research is in the public interest and if it can be shown that publishers actually would get a financial problem with that, why not have the government finance this?
Taxes in the US are amazingly low; there's a lot of room to go in order to improve not only social security, but also matters of public interest like this one that cannot be financed through the free market.
Serious question and I want a serious answer. Exactly what is the "Dinosaur" part of the whole publishing industry? Distribution? Writing? Editing? Researching? Whole thing? Or just the parts you don't agree with?
Pros and cons of digital verses the old way at each step?
This is the first step. The publishing industry will first object to any form of an on-line library, or any way to access printed material on-line for free. Then they will move on to standard physical libraries, claiming they too infringe on copyrights. Once the physical libraries are shut down, publishers and copyright holders will be able to charge ridiculous fees for information, and only the rich will be able to learn and better themselves. This WILL stifle innovation, education, and learning. Zebra_X is completely right.
RTFA--this action is being taken to protect "nonprofit publishers of academic journals and scholarly books," not whoever the fuck wrote the Ya-Ya Sisterhood book. Academics don't subscribe to journals or buy monographs because their cousin or some internet nerd tells them it "changed their life;" they buy them because they know it will contain research important to their field. Original scholarship is costly and time-consuming to produce, and by its nature serves a very small market. A few lost sales can make a big difference. Those who publish it have the right -- indeed, the obligation -- to protect their own investment and the rights of their authors.
the ambitious project will violate copyrights and stifle future sales
Errr... shouldn't that be "stifling the flow of knowledge," the basic reason for printing books? Oh, wait, Google is helping that.
I agree!
Please, whatever you do, don't click on any links to my novel. Whatever you do, dont read it online! Oh, the humanity! (and I say this as one who has been published, and is well on the way toward doing so again).
Has no one considered that Google will be allowing word and phrase searches in books, but won't necessarilly be providing the full text online? I suspect that is the case (I really can't see google wrecking their business by engaging in wholesale, deliberate copyright infringement), and that will drive more sales, not less.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Specifically, look up profit and revenue. It's possible to have the latter without having the former. Heck, you can even have revenue while having a loss!
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Oh? Their survival depends on copyright, this coming from university publishers.
My wallet's survival also depends on these bunch on people. Often I have to suck it up and take it to buy their crappy books, and I sure wouldn't mind having them available through Google Library.
However, I have yet to find an elegant solution to read e-books, so I do buy books worthy to be kept, whether it was course books or books of interest.
Google Library would serve as a check against crappy books and needless revisions - if they'd like to stay in business, they'd have to make their readers want to buy them
All we need is another group to join the crybabies at the MPAA and the RIAA.
Too bad this one is backwards: Association of American University Presses (AAUP)
Who wants to read a whole book online anyways. If you really want the true quality and content, you will buy it. Just like a DVD. Sure you can download it, but you don't get the fancy case with all the BS literature inside.
Not to mention that Google sells nice targeted ads, such that if you like what you read, a few clicks will let you order the book. Perhaps it would generate more sales? The only contention is that they are scanning the entire work, and they are afraid that people will be able to get the whole thing for free. Google should be able to quell these fears.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Look, Mikey LIKES it!"
If the academic presses were more progressive, they'd be collaborating with Google instead of fighting it.
One of the issues with using digital sources in research is verifying authenticity.
Imagine that after Google's search engine helps find the academic research you're looking for, you can make a small payment to have a digitally signed excerpt downloaded for local viewing or printing. The digital signature verifies that the content has not been altered anywhere during transmission, that it accurately reflects the original research.
The combination of convenience (excerpting just what you need, and being able to find it quickly) plus authenticity would be a boon to research and a potentially much larger revenue stream to the universities than hardcopy publishing, without restricting the openness of research.
From "about Google Print"
appear to me to define the term "fair use". Scholarly research is/one of the first uses carved out for fair use in the first place.
Seems to me that on th surface people selling home ink/paper would support this. I mean, holy crap, I can't imagne printing a newspaper or book everyother day... or week...
Screw my karma.
Again, he *chooses*. Each author/publisher should have the right to choose.
Why?
However, uneversity presses are generally non-profit organizations, so they generally price their materials to cover the costs associated with producing, storing and distributing them.
If the materials are available free online, then all those costs are eliminated.
If someone still wants a nicely bound hardcopy, then that person has the choice of getting one printed at a local print shop. The university press can also offer on demand printing for a cost covering fee.
I guess I don't understand their objection to having their materials available without any work required from them.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
For the sake of open information and a climate of "I want information now so make it available electronically and let me search for it", some businesses and business model might have to go the way of the dodo. So be it.
I just wish the RIAA and MPAA were already extinct.
Indeed. And that, as I've pointed out here before amid cries of trolling, does make legal justification for other Google features -- Google Cache in particular, but also Google Groups and potentially things like Google Image Search -- uncertain at best.
If anything, it sounds like this project would be on much safer legal ground, as long as (a) they really are only reproducing content that's no longer covered by copyright, and (b) they pay suitable licensing fees for all the material they transfer to their database that's still covered by copyright.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I suspect the biggest concern publishers would have is that by doing this, Google is making the public domain far more accessible on a wider scale. People will start to see why it is useful.
Furthermore, some publishers depend on selling public domain works as a large portion of their product line.
SSL Certificate
Statements like 'Communism is good (or evil)' or 'Capitalism is good(or evil)' make no sense. Both Communism and Capitalism just exist, they are neither good or evil.
I was born and lived the first 40 years of my life under a Socialist regine in an East European Country. I did not notice if the Government was good or evil, I just thought it did its job of enforcing the laws of the time and preventing the occurrence of social chaos (it provided jobs for everybody, kept thieves in jail, thinks like that).I did not care much about it, I was too busy living my life, finishing my PhD, getting married, taking care of my kids, etc.
I did not experienced any hardships under communism. Since I was no Party member I knew I would not become a big boss. However I had a regular life, a good job, I lived a confortable living, went every year on vacation, and most importantly I KNEW that NOTHING UNEXPECTED WOULD HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE. I have fond recollections of that era, not because of communism but because I was young at the time and when you are young, capitalism or communism, everything is great.
Now life is much harder. Because of capitalism you never know what is going to happen tomorrow, usualy huge inflation, another salary cut, etc.
I was under the impression that Google was planning to scan books that where quite old already ( thus no copyright issues here ) and quite hard to find, something like Newton's Principia or so. I believe that this is a very interesting move, although i hate to read long texts from my computer and i hate printing them as well so i would definitely go for the printed version. Anyway...
What most of the people are saying is that who needs publishing houses etc etc but the truth is that these books wouldn't be available in the first place if the publishing houses were not there. As far as technical textbooks are concerned the cost of the god damn book isn't only the paper, have you ever tried to typeset a mathematical text with LaTeX? It takes AGES, really... And not to mention that these books aren't really Da Vinci's Code. As a postgraduate student myself, I have paid around $2,000 for books up to now and i don't think that a single penny was wasted. You have to see your books as an investment, a cab driver pays for the cab's license and the car, a musician for the instrument and a scientist for his books.
As far as new editions are concerned, you probably haven't studied your books at all. All books have typos or getting outdated or need a little bit of "lifting" here and there, remove a few pages that were not very well written, add a new chapter for this new cool trend in science and so on. There is a reason for a publisher to print a new edition otherwise they would just do reprints. Someone mentioned that there is no reason to have the 7th edition of a calculus book since calculus hasn't changed much during the last century... Maybe the idea is the same but the approach might have changed, or the way to teach things or even the notation. Many people are experts in quantum mechanics nowadays but Dirac's first paper seems incomprehensible, even to professors.
Anyway, Google is nice, their idea about scanning rare books and making available online is cool etc and i like computers yes but please do not oversimplify things.
Best.
How is this google work going to be different from Amazon's scanned, searchable books on-line? The books are also copyrighted, and Amazon plaster's that fact all over the page image...
The Publishers doth protest too much, methinks.
Look I feel for the publishers but why is it google's problem if it threatens their businuess model. If that was the case we would still have horse and buggy because henery ford was threating their model. Adapt or Die.
I can understand publishers' concern regarding an outside party scanning and indexing their works, but if they are serious about maintaining control, they must be ready to provide these services themselves. If they can provide a unified index of information that provides value, consumers will pay for that service.
As an example, the ACM Technical Library is a great resource. It has a good facility that allows you to search the contents of all ACM publications, and allows access to abstracts of all works online. With a subscription, you have access to the complete works. I'm happy to pay $99/year for that service as it provides quick access to high quality information.
If publishers are not willing to step up and provide services that the consumers desire, it seems only logical that a forward thinking third party should be able to step into that void.
Just 2-cents.
The problem with textbooks is that i know i've been coerced into buying books because i need one set of questions off of one page for a course.
If i could have looked at 3 pages online then i'm sure i could have at least avoided one or two books.
The sad fact is that textbooks are a bit like albums. Most have a few interesting bits, but it's mostly filler to make it 700 pages thick and justify the price. It's rare to find an entirely useful textbook.
With a caveat...that author chooses to have his books in digital format to give for free. Again, he *chooses*. Each author/publisher should have the right to choose.
But the author's purported "right to choose" [ie limit] who is allowed to say what about his books lies in direct conflict with the fundamental human right to free speech. Which set of rights should we ignore?
I don't believe in an author's right to control his discoveries, be they laws of science, a turn of phrase, or a catchy melody, especially when that right of control limits the rights of others.
Should a copyright holder be able to forbid me from making the same speech twice, if he records it before I do? He can, under the laws where I live, because copyright belongs to the first person to make a tangible copy of a speech, not the one who discovers it.
Copyright has become a tool to silence people from taking works, and recasting them in a new and more interesting light. In that sense, it forbids as much creativity as it inspires.
One of the best songwriters I know constantly dabbles with her creations, altering them and dynamically adjusting them to suit her venue. When she does it, we call it "creativity". When someone else does it, we call it "copyright violation", and label it "uncreative", instead.
There is no natural right to profit. If your business model relies on suppressing freedom of fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and expression, perhaps a new business model is in order?
--
AC
violate copyrights and stifle future sales
If it works like now, you'll be able to read just a few pages out of the book so it's not exactly that a hacker could make a script to automatically grab entire books from their index or anything. They simply only have maybe 10-20 pages per book.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
That doesn't mean in a wharehouse somewhere either.
A large proportion of books get a run of 1k or 2k volumes and 'dissapear' from the bookstore shelves within a year of two from being published.
Its simply isn't worth it to the book stores.
The books end their lives mouldering away in the remainder bins of 'discount book' stores and Salvation Army rummage sales (and don't earn another dime for the publishers.)
I've got some books that I've been looking for for years and won't find anywhere for any amount of money.
And that's just because of the storage costs, never mind that they aren't printed on acid free paper and are currently disappearing into 'slow smoke.'
I regret to state that the book publishers are trying to create a new revenue stream from nothing because they didn't care to do so before.
Screw 'em!
Let 'em lose the rights to scan ALL books that they can't be bothered to keep on the shelves.
Let 'em be forced to sell the rights to ALL the books that they can't be bothered to keep up to date.
Have you bought some school books lately?
They cost a nickle less than photo-copying the entire book would at the for-profit school copier.
They keep coming out with new 'editions' for accounting books and, man do they CHARGE!. Over a hundred bucks for an HR Management book and you can't use last years! (Like ALL of the laws governing HR ahd changed. Pshaw...)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The author DOES have a choice.
He chooses to sell his rights to the publisher.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
$80+ for a 200-300 page book that gets printed for $5.00 a copy...and you have to buy that book because the professor wrote it specifically for this class...
F-U...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
The question is, what you do with it afterwards. Google is letting people look at less that they can see in a bookstore. The only difference is that we have a lot more tools when we're home for taking notes, etc.
If you want to read the whole work, you pay for a copy. Google has protections against reading "the next four pages" and so on.
FIRST they bitch that the Google Library project is too US-centric. Then, when Google News aggregates some stories, a French news agency SUES them for copyright infringement.
You're not paying attention to us! Oh, good, you are. Now we'll sue you!
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
*sarcasm* Let's see, I go to the campus bookstore and purchase a text that's required for a class. What?!?! $100 for a text on ordinary differential equations? Surely, the study of ODE hasn't changed much in say the last 30 years, but my professor insists that we use this specific edition and there aren't any in the USED bin. Oh wait, I see...my professor is a contributing author...
And even if the book is available in the used bin, it costs 75% of the new price. Some hapless student is going to pay that, open the book a few times over the course of a semester and then resell it back to the bookstore at 15% of what he/she paid for it...only to see it back for sale a few days later at 75% of the cover price again.
Rinse and repeat...until, of course, another edition of the book is published with a new forward and some extremely minor content changes and the cycle starts anew (without the availability of a USED alternative for one semester)....I think the publishers are getting upset with the wrong people. And students are just getting the shaft.
Before Gutenberg (the German, not the project), it was not possible to make money publishing books. After the Internet, the same has become true. The window has closed.
Many business models are only viable for a certain time period. Just like blacksmiths and candlemakers, the publishing industry is likely to survive only as a shadow of its former self.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." - Lord Acton
tree version before I would even finish the e-version.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to read books off-line i.e. reading from print rather than from screen (one reason being that a PC is a bit inconvenient to read in bed or the bath ;)
Also, if I decided to print out an electronic book from my PC for off-line consumption, for all of the paper, printer toner and *time* that I use doing this (think HP Deskjet;), I might as well buy the real thing nicely printed and bound.
The publishers needn't be as concerned as they are. A PC will never replace a book (at least not until they invent something as mobile as paper.)
...be damned!
"I hope they legalize drugs so you hurry up and fucking die." Charles Bronson (the band, not the man)
*blah blah blah* our business model is obsolete *blah blah blah blah*
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
How gullible can you get?
The AAUP should read Google Patent Application 0040122811.
Excerpt:
[0037] In another example embodiment, a permission protocol authorizing display of copyrighted material is made conditional. For example, access to copyrighted works is conditioned on payment of a fee, or conditioned that the copyrighted material be accompanied by certain advertisements, or conditioned on satisfaction of some other term or condition.
"The project also has drawn criticism in Europe for placing too much emphasis on material from the United States."
In other words, some Europeans are insisting that a US company has to do this for European content because they don't want to do it themselves?
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
"If a publisher has a copyright, but decides that a work should not be in print - it is effectively censored."
I shudder to think that the idea has occured to Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaw(?sp) or any other of the Luddites out there who try to suppress information.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I'm not a huge book fan or anything, I actually love computers, but come on!
I like the fact that I don't have to worry about a book running out of batteries or recharging it.
The display never gives me a headache (reading small, lit displays in the dark sometimes does)
If I'm on a page that I know I will want to get back to, I can stick my finger between the sheets. For longer storage, I can place the bookmark there.
If I want to reference a previous event, I can usually flip to it within seconds.
I have a great indexing system called a bookshelf. I don't have to remember which CD I put it on or if canceling my audible account will make that book go away for the rest of my life (Well, that's for audible books, but I'm sure the same applies to any DRM controled media).
I can set it down on it's face to save the place if I have to jump up, and if I don't get to come back for a few days, it'll still be there.
None of these break me out of the character I'm living through the book.
You know, honestly, this excersize is kind of pointless because I can't come up with a single reason to read a book online. I even print out source code to read when I really want to think about it/mark it up. Why would I do that if paper wasn't a superior medium?
What I'm saying here is, think about the percentage of people in the world who can actually use a computer competently. I'm pretty sure, like said among the other comments, that most of the world will continue to buy these books regardless.
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
And they should! Books were written with that kind of experience in mind. Next time your wife reads an old classic, remind her that it probably was written in parchment or papyrus, and that's the way they should be read. Damn, old books weren't meant to have pages turned, they were meant to be *scrolled*! Or maybe they were written in cuneiform tablets?
Copyright on works created by corporations does indeed last 95 years. However, works created by human authors are protected by copyright for the life of the author + 70 years, which is potentially far longer.
And for many classes of works, the number of works that fall under "work made for hire" greatly exceeds the number that don't.
Where is the problem?
If Google cuts their publishing expenses to essentially zero, this is a good thing, right?
Non-profit orgs usually don't exist to keep a few (paid) people employed: they are usually (supposedly) trying to accomplish some worthy goal.
Google is going to help them.
..these dang newfangled Cars are taking away our business. And when everyone drives cars, who will shoe your horses then?
Unless I read this incorrectly, this goes completely against what copyrights were intended for. Copyrights were not about ensuring that the creator wuld make money, but instead that the legal monopoly they provide will encourage them to create and be creative, and/or bring further reasearch and information public. With copyrights lasting beyond what is needed, sometimes for 100yrs+ easily now, and the fact that people now care more about using copyrights for financial gain instead, we can say goodbye to conventional copyrights... for now.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
We do not want any confusion with Alcoholics Anonymous.
I am in graduate school and when my boss says 'hey, read this book' i have to drop about 100 bucks on a book.. that is, if Dover publishing hasn't made an older text on the subject available for 12 dollars instead of 112 dollars.
I dont think that google providing free access for books is the solution, but i KNOW that paying some university publishing company 100 bucks for a book that i might read once isn't the awnser.
Not sure how true this is, but I was told that you are allowed to reproduce part of a work of non-fiction in the UK. This is what allows for quotations and things. It was a certain fraction of the total work, I think it was as long as it was less than one third of the total number of characters, or something similar. Photocopied it in front of the librarian anyways. In my experience of academic quotations from recognised publications, it is usually solely there for the purpose of having a clever looking quotation from a recognised publication. It doesnt matter if the quote supports the point in its original context, as long as the bibliography makes the piece look well reasearched and smart. These people dont read the books, or even take the arguament in, they have already made their mind up. Some of the most closed minded people I have met have been academics. I also met someone who collected hardback edditions of the fattest smartest sounding books he could, just to have a good looking bookcase full of smart books (It did look rather good though). He had never read a single one of them. The spines of each and everyone was in immaculate condition, but he must have spent upwards of £300 on the massive mahogany case alone. I dread to think of the ammount he spent on the books.
"Unfortunately for the copyright owners, this seriously threatens a business model that has served them well for generations and they must find a way to protect their property. Unfortunately for us, the way most have chosen is suiting us into oblivion and trying to jam legislation through our government that is intended to deter criminal behavior but mostly just makes life inconvenient and annoying for the majority of us who are doing no wrong."
So what would you suggest? Obviously the "bad people" suddenly aren't going to turn good, and it's still takes money to exist in this world. Sounds like the "good people" are simply going to complain about being caught in the middle, and yell at those exercising "self-defense" instead of exercising social pressure on those "bad people".
Now if you excuse me, I have some Worldcom investors to yell at.
The issue is simple: If I'm a publisher, I sell my journal or book to 10,000 libraries. If Google indexes it for free access, none of those libraries need to buy my journal or book, because the people who need them have free access.
It isn't the reader who purchases from big publishing houses, it's the academic institution. Google undercuts this financial strategy.
The annual report of one of the largest education publishers, Pearson Education, seems to indicate they have a lot of padding before anyone hurts their higher education business. They reported $255 million in profits from higher education book sales for 2004.
Apparently, they're going to start doing their own e-book delivery program. Roughly $50 for an e-book that didn't cost them much of anything to distribute strikes me as a bit on the pricey side, though. I'd rather share used books with friends. As noted at the end of the annual report linked page, they blame lower profits on slower adoption of new books. I have yet to see a substantially different new edition for many of these text books. It all seems like a gimmick to me.
Maybe they're just afraid Google will do the searching better than they could have. This is academia after all - ego rules.
I doubt there will be any impact on sales at all, but so what if there is? An archaic system is replaced by a newer more efficient one.
"What I was getting at, is if the journal can't survive with google posting their already freely available (be it in physical printed form in a library) then they will fizzle and disappear,"
There's a difference between digital and analog, and you know it.
"but there will come a replacement, with only minor adjustments to the model, they could still flourish."
There's an implicit "...and the replacements will be equal or better" to the above. Much as the guy who will replace the one who stopped working on Shorewall will be equivilant or better.
"If they choose not to, that's their call, but there will be something that fills the gap they leave, there always is."
See above response, plus if the same forces are in effect that lead to the first model "dying", then either nothing will come along, or a worse replacement will come along. Here's a relevent example. There's a jewlery store that's been around for several decades. His model is obviously selling jewelry to people. Problem is that he'll have to go out of business, because of some robberies that even his insurance can't cover. Apparently his business model couldn't handle a massive loss. What kind of better replacement will come along? Well there could be another jewlry store business, but it'll have to have much more stringent security (attack robots),* and it will have to pass the cost along to it's customers in the form of higher prices, and less convienence. A better replacement? Not if you were looking for cheaper jewelry, and a hassle-free shopping experience.
*Let's pretent that that stringent security involves a strip search for every customer going out (shoplifting), and coming in (carrying a weapon). The crimminals don't follow rules, so the strip search is irrelevent to them (bust in the back door). The innocent consumer however.
Why should I buy a book when I can go to the library and check it out and read it. ( perhaps we should make libraries illegal since they stomp on some peoples business modle). What we should have is electronic libraries with every book ever published in them. ( you can't make a copy only read it.) But currently our social structures for getting people paid to do the work of creating all those nice books have not kept up with our technology.
For the record I am not a supporter of laws that shore up business modles that are in need of being replaced.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Information is power. He who controls information controls the scociety.
Either way: this should be handled under the freedom of the press clause. What google intends to do is a novell new work and thus should be intitled to protection as free speach.
having media online for reference does anything but stifle the market. not to mention google only allows you to read a few pages before telling you to go get the hard copy. are these people stupid or just dumb?
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
In the USA, my car insuarance "liability" payment actually exceeds my income since I have very little income and three vehicles, the state requiring a policy for each one. I think your percentages above 100% can be increased in order to more accurately represent how distribution works in the USA. And I have no wrecks - ever. But if someone else hits me or scratchs my door, the scratch rusts and is not covered by "my" insurance.
Mercy on Academic Publishers?
(belly grows wide)
HO HO HO Ho ! Whaaaa ha ha ha ha.
Maybe "their turn has come."
And students can use the HP printer for Hamlet instead of paying $12. for a used paperback with the cover torn off of it from the "University" bookstore.
It just wouldn't be College if you weren't required to *pay* for books written by the professor -- at about a buck fifty a page...
Reminds me of Gutenberg
Go Away! Not for Sale
Has Google's web search been accused of copyright infringement? How is it fundamentally different from news or book searches?
I suspect that web search engines don't typically get sued for copyright infringement only because they've been around for as long as the Web has been popular. But whether Google indexes a web site or a book, it doesn't (okay, if you overlook the web cache) deliver the content; it only references it and makes it more accessible.
If Google made it as easy to find information in books as it has done for the Web, publishers should be PAYING Google to index their works, not fretting and threatening to sue over it. Think about it. What better way to tell people about books they might be interested in buying? Traditional advertising and shelf-browsing are hit-and-miss at best. Content searches over books would be a phenomenal way to attract customers (IMHO etc).
I'd expect dissemination of information to be the goal behind the non-profit university presses. A goal which the Google's index should help.
Of course the goal of the non-profits may not be the same as the goals of the people employed by the non-profits...
Anyway, making Google searches refer to the books should increase sales quite a lot.
How long before someone writes a script that can search for a beginning passage of a book and then continue its search while recording the entire contents of a book, all for free. This should be very interesting to see how, and if, Google approaches this.
/. phishing? Fun...
Then take your internet library book and feed it through a text-to-speech program. You could get an audiobook copy of "A Brief History of Time" as read by the author... for free.