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Google Print Holds The Presses
brokenarmsgordon writes "Google Print, the project launched in December to digitize the entire collections of five major libraries, has been put on hold until November. Google will stop cataloging in-copyright books until November to give publishers time to decide if they would like to participate and to mark which books they want excluded from the index. "
That's not the actual google blog
Amazon's text is searchable but they do have some safeguards in place to placate the publishers. I think you have to actually be semi (gold box access) logged into an Amazon account to use look/search inside the book.
"... You can either click to see a list of all references to the term in that particular book or click on the excerpt's page number to read the entire page on which the excerpt appears. Once you're on a reader page, you can browse forward or back two pages within the book, or you can search the book for other terms."
9 7041/qid=1123889023/sr=1-1/102-8303520-3675334
from http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/101
The important part is the limit in pages you can read after you find a term
The important part is the limit in pages you can read after you find a term
That, and the fact that Amazon's system is explicitly opt-in for the publisher.
Publishers who refuse to participate should be punished. While I respect their right to protect their property I do not respect their lack of foresight nor do I appreciate the damage they do to the free exchange of ideas by artificially limiting access to these valuable resources. Take the time to write to your favorite publishers and let them know that you support the Google Print project and will vote with your dollars for those publishers who do. Here is contact information for three of my favorite publishers.
u s.jsp
Tor Books
E-mail: inquiries@tor.com
Fax: (212) 388-0191
Dead Tree:
Tor Books
175 Fifth Avenue
New York NY 10010.
Perseus Books Group
2300 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Phone: 800-371-1669
Fax: 800-453-2884
Email: perseus.orders@perseusbooks.com
http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/contact_
Random House
customerservice@randomhouse.com
Random House, Inc.
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Phone: (212) 782-9000
http://www.randomhouse.com/about/contact.html
From your link: Google Weblog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, Inc.
Google's actual blog is http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
From there we have:
"So now, any and all copyright holders - both Google Print partners and non-partners - can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November."
So unless told otherwise, Google will assume they have permission to scan copyright work.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One is a completely voluntary project, at print.google.com, where publishers send Google hardcopies or PDFs, and Google indexes them. I've participated in this project as a publisher. If you want to see an example of Google print, go to print.google.com and type in the search text "Even as great and skeptical a genius as Galileo" (with the quotes). It'll send you to one of my books, and supply you with a link to buy it. (Unlike most of the books in the progran, my books are also CC licensed, so you could actually download the PDF for free if you didn't want a nice bound copy.) The idea is that it's meant to help publishers boost sales: people search in Google, run across your book, and buy it. It's not meant to be a way to read an entire book --- they make it a hassle to do that.
The other project is completely seperate: to scan and index the contents of some libraries.
AFAIK, the name "Google Print" was only supposed to refer to the first (opt-in) project.
So far my experience is that Google Print is a complete bust. I sent them the printed books last year. They scanned them and OCRed them, and then said they'd go live Real Soon Now, which never happened. They sent me an apology note, along with cool little digital clock embedded in a blue doll that says Google on its chest. The apology note said it sould happen Real Soon Now, but that was some time ago. IIRC there was a period of several weeks where I could search in regular google, and and some of the results would be Google Print results from my books, but now they appear to have turned that off. (Try it with the quoted phrase I gave above, and it only gives links to my PDFs and mirrors on other sites, but nothing from Google Print.) Since people don't normally go to print.google.com to search, that means the program basically isn't doing anything right now.
Find free books.
Just because the technology is 'cool' doesn't make it right.
And just because the law is 'behind' modern technology doesn't make the law wrong.
This law is there to protect people and allow them to make a living off of publishing written material.
This could potentially steal a lot of money from the copyright owners. If Google _asks_ for and gets permission from the copyright owner (not assumes it's OK unless told otherwise), then fine, scan the thing and put it online.
But until Google has the permission of the copyright owner, they need to stop doing this.
Perhaps it's already been decided in court, but I wonder what the legality of the Google cache is. Technically, Google is copying and storing copyrighted webpages I would think.
While Google is at it, why don't they 'scan in' copyrighted software, like Windows XP, Solaris, etc. and make them freely available.
Or, how about copyrighted DVDs, like the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc., etc.
Paper is largely made from fast growing plantation trees and is, for the most part, 'sustainable'. Deforestation mostly occurs when people want to farm a piece of land.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Google needs permission from every publisher for each and every book they wish to publish through the web.
Just waiting N months for complaints doesn't grant G any rights, no matter how long N is.