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."

Comments

Re:do as i say...

[no reason to be here]

I'm still waiting for Mr O'Reilly to make all his books available for free.

You obviously do not understand what the true intention of the Google Library Project is. That's ok, though, as a lot of people don't. It is not an attempt to put the full test of every book on line so that you can access the full text for free. It is an attempt to make a fully searchable database of every book. It's main beneficiary will not be cheap bastards who think everything should be free, but rather scholars doing research: they'll have, ostensibly, only one database that they will have to search. The people who actually have the most to lose from this are companies that currently provide database services of this sort (like ABI/Inform) to university libraries.

As such, O'Reilly is not in any way being a hypocritic if he supports Google's efforts in this particular enterprise.

They're ignorant Luddites.

[doublem]

I just sent them the following e-mail:

To: staff@authorsguild.org
Subject: Google Lawsuit

http://www.authorsguild.org/news/charity_handy_tal king.htm

Let me imagine a moment that I'm a publisher, or Writer's Guild.

Let me further imagine that a corporation wants to offer a free search engine, to make it easier for potential customers to search for and find the works written by the writers I represent.

I'll continue this pleasant little thought experiment by assuming they don't want to charge me or my writers any money. We don't even have to sign up.

It's not unlike what Amazon.com does for the books it sells, except this corporation wants to not only make the entire book searchable, while only making small segments available to readers, but offer a selection of purchase options, so potential readers will be even MORE likely to purchase the books.

What do I do?

Do I thank them for offering this free service that will only pour more money into the pockets of the writers I represent?

Do I start making arrangements to get them electronic copies of the books, so the writers I represent can get into the index that much sooner?

Oh, I know, I'll sue. I'll ignore all the long term benefits, and try to kill the project by blackmailing the corporation with a lawsuit and demands that THEY pay ME for providing a service to MY writers!

Brilliant.

I selecting the last option, I've guaranteed that the up and coming writers will never look twice at me or the organization I represent, assuming it's nothing but a club for Luddites, afraid of technology and more interested in scraping up a few pennies here and there than in actually turning a profit.