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Tim O'Reilly on the Google Library Project
dkleinsc writes "The New York Times is running an op-ed piece(free registration required) by Tim O'Reilly arguing that the Google Library Project is a good thing for authors in general, and suggests a lawsuit by the Author's Guild against Google is acting against authors' best interest."
Note that O'Reilly has their own electronic book service called Safari. Most of their own books, and those of a few affiliated publishers, can be completely read online and fully searched. It's very handy considering reference material can become outdated so quickly. So rather than spend $100 on 2 paper books you can look at 5 at a time for one year of their service. And you can change what's on your "bookshelf" every month.
They have a lot to gain by people getting used to electronic books.
Developers: We can use your help.
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/c9f39e0a8a543c694 dfe466032f26f6b/index.html
No registration required.
True, and I have spent a fair amount of money through Safari. What I like is that it lets me pick and choose what I need instead of buying an pricey book for only one chapter. The result: I get what I need, O'Reilly makes money, and the book authors make money. The best of both worlds.
Making books searchable (and buyable) will result in more money for everyone, not less. This is what Safari has shown.
As mentioned in this CNN article, "Under Google's strictures, readers can see just five pages at a time of publisher-submitted titles -- and no more than 20 percent of an entire book through multiple searches. For books in the public domain, they can read the entire book online."
They are not even making the full contents available, so refresh the page and change your IP all you want, you will never see more than 20 percent of the book.
What would seem to make more sense is for Google to only scan this 20 percent of the text that they will use and not the full text, thus relieving the publishers of their worries that Google has the full content and could inadvertently display it. But they say they need the full text to determine all the context of the work.
What would seem to make more sense is for Google to only scan this 20 percent of the text that they will use and not the full text
I was under the impression that the 20% would be determined by what portion of a book most frequently matched a given search criteria.
Alternately, they may be saying that only 20% will made available to a given IP address. If that's the case, then creative use of a few proxy servers can get you the whole book.
Of course, most books worth pirating have already been scanned and OCRed, and can be found in various file sharing networks already. The fact that the Author's Guild is going after Google for this only makes sense when you realize they want Google to pay them a licensing fee to offer this service.
Yep, they want Google top pay THEM for offering a Service that will make THEIR writers more money.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The first is their Open Books project which includes out-dated, out-of-print, or community produced texts.
The second is their embracing of the Founder's copyright, under which they will release hundreds of books in decades to come, in collaboration with their authors.
It would be great if those books were released earlier, but at least they have taken a stance on releasing them earlier than necessary.