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Microsoft Joins Yahoo! Book Search Plan
tanman writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft has signed on to 'work with the Open Content Alliance (OCA), set up by the Internet Archive, to initially put 150,000 works online. The move comes as Google faces growing legal pressure from publishers over its own global digital library plans.'"
...never innovate.
I have one simple demand. I want every single book, magazine, and recording available on the internet. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of books and periodicals that are unread and unsearchable right now because they are rotting away in some library or private collection. Human knowledge needs to be preserved and expanded. Is it unreasonable for me to be able to have access to every single textbook on C++? Forget the legal issues. We'll get some country to pass a law that it is ok to archive information like this...but it needs to be done. Too much knowledge is being lost.
Because you could get a computer to do the searching automatically, and reconstruct the entire text in a matter of minutes or hours, and upload it to eCamel for the entire world to download.
Yes, digital databases can be stolen, but then again, I could digitize books and bit-torrent them (I don't use bittorrent or fileshare, for the record) or whatever. I think you're overestimating people's motivations. Getting a book four sentences (or even a page) at a time would take days. Buying/Borrowing it and scanning it would be much faster, and when you add in time and power costs, probably cheaper.
I don't see what the threat is from either search engine, as I would never, ever buy a book to read a couple of 4 sentence excerpts. At best, I'd check it out at a library. I mean, I couldn't read a novel or textbook like this, but I could check a quote from any book instantly, and it would help me get all the info on a book I read part of and forgot, or wanted to buy after reading a bit of it somewhere.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Well, friend... We -are- talking about Microsoft here. I'm wondering when Yahoo will find MS's knife in its back.
Take life easy: one bit at a time.
MS will probably have a little easier time with publishers, thanks to their advocacy of DRM. It'll be interesting to see if/how the works they archive are crippled.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
The internet archive has been involved with this for more than 8 years. Amazon also has had the search inside the book for longer than Google has been running google print.
Oh, I can imagine, in a few years time, M$ will suggest that you can only use Internet Explorer 9.infinity to view these online "open" materials. Nothing else will work.
I can see it now.
"Welcome to the OPEN content Alliance. Unfortunately, you are not using Internet Explorer/book reader/whatever..." "Please download and install the MICROSOFT reader, available only on VISTA. Enter your credit card number here: "...etc.
I like Google's ideas much, much better.
Once they start putting college texts online, then we'll talk. Paying $160 for the book that you use for one semester, and getting $30 for giving it back to the school so that they can resell it again next semester for $175... Psshhtt. Let's talk searchable texts, or downloading only one chapter for a partial price. Kind of like iTunes - don't want the full cd? Buy one song. Novels? Give me the paper version any day. Of course, the sooner I go blind from staring at the beautifully unnatural glow of my computer screen, the sooner I don't have to worry about this issue anyway. How about something that gives suggestions based on what you've read? We have that for music, shouldn't be too hard for books. There are so many possibilities available to us if these things are available online. Everyone is so uptight about "rights" that they don't see what can really be done. The problem isn't the people that "steal" - it's the system that's not working. When you overcharge for something, people find other ways of getting it. They share books. They download music and movies. Instead of persecuting them, take a look at why the system is having problems, and fix that instead.
This sentence is false.