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. "

Comments

copyright issues

[w98]

I've always wondered about copyright issues with services like this. Questions were raised, I'm sure, when Amazon started doing their "look inside" service, although I'm pretty sure the text they've scanned is not searchable. Quite a difference from what Google is attempting.

It will be interesting to see which titles will be available through it once Google Print is ready for prime-time use.

Bad that Copyright takes so long to expire

[xiando]

The ideal library, obviously, would be every book ever written neatly indexed and available on-line at Wiki-type sites or dedicated sites, searchable by Google. Knowledge should belong to humanity, it should be among the commons like clean air. Authors obviously tremble with fear of the idea of any and every book being available to anyone for free, for it could potentially cut the revenue they are currently earning on humanity's mass-murder of trees. This destruction must and should stop, moving literature on-line is only a natural step toward a sustain able development.