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The Implications of Google's Digital Library
Connectmc wrote to mention a CNN article discussing Google's Digital Library project. From the article: "Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google's ambitious program to scan millions of books and make their text fully searchable on the Internet. On the one hand, Sanfilippo credits the program for boosting sales of obscure titles at Penn State University Press, where he works. On the other, he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues."
would sound like this: "Buggy-whip makers concerned that new automobile may hurt industry revenues".
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Maybe we shouldn't worry so much about the lost profits, but more about the knowledge we made avaible to the world...
Isn't anyone bothered by the fact that companies trying to secure "longterm revenues" are constantly preventing society from progressing as a whole? If a new idea or technology emerges that is going to put you out of business, it's time to do something else. Perpetuating the same crap year after year after year serves no purpose other than hindering progress.
. . . he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues.
Innovation usually reduces demand for the obsolete version. The fact is, books are a pain in the tail to search through any way you look at it. It's about time a serious effort is made to make printed material electronically searchable.
Seems to me that very few would object to Google creating and running a library on the model of public libraries. I go to our library two or three times each week to get books, music, and movies. I return the things I've borrowed and someone else borrows them.
Here's the problem: the digital stuff, especially the music, is very easy to copy. I copy some of it. The books however, are too difficult to copy and I don't need to own a copy anyway. (I've moved enough times in my life to realize how much books weigh and noticed that the library is significanly cheaper and Barnes & Noble or Amazon.)
But if Google runs a library, everything will be digital. That's fine if what they were lending was in the public domain, but, thanks to Disney et. al., public domain is a thing of the past.
Seems to me that a Google library will be a marketplace for copying. Then again, most of the people who run Google are about a foot and a half smarter than I am. So maybe they have this all figured out.
I'm curious to see what they come up with.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
A man should be no more afraid of google's attempt to digitize information than a library's ability to purchase and distribute books for free.
On a side note, I am more likely to buy the paper version of a book than sitting and reading it off of a LCD display. Which I assume the average person would do the same.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Just like Gutenberg disrupted the Copyist Monk industry few century ago, Google library has the potential to completely change the way people find books, is it bad ? is it good ? I think it's just different and easier for the book's end user: us.
A bookseller who's worried that making books that are in the public domain available on the net will hurt his revenues.
The initial reaction I have is, 'Cry me a river.' These are books in the public domain and are meant to be freely available to everyone. Google's just making it easier.
My second reaction is that he might have a point, and he's deserving of some sympathy. But then I realize that he's a university bookseller. The books people pay for college and university classes are overpriced as it is, ($80 for my USED calculus text, and that was ten years ago; I can only imagine how much it is now.) Somehow I don't think that a university bookstore is going to be hurting all THAT much. So this is just another case of someone whose industry needs to 'evolve or die.' Though he really only has to worry if the textbook publishers 'evolve' before he does.
Besides, the printed word isn't going out of style anytime soon. There are plenty of books I prefer to have in dead tree form, to hold and read and carry with me on trips when I don't have or don't WANT to have my laptop with me. And what a lot of us on slashdot seem to forget is that not everyone in the world has a laptop or a PDA with e-book software on it.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."