Slashdot Mirror
Google to Sell Old News Articles
Krishna Dagli was one of a few people to note that Google is planning on selling old news. Or more accurately, scanning in 200 years of old newspapers, and selling people the ability to view the full text. They'll be using publications like the NYT and Time magazine. Summaries will be free, but the full article text will have a price.
Don't worry about paying for old news on Slashdot, it gets reposted every two weeks!!
Google becoming more like Slashdot! I'm sorry. That wasn't funny. I'll go sit in the corner now. Bye bye, good Karma.
I can't wait for this to get duped. Hopefully it'll take a few days so I can think up some good gags...
Summation 2
As for me, that's what I go to the dentist for. Apparently Richard Nixon has resigned! And Car and Driver has pictures of the new Gremlin!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
does anyone else feel that their charging for what was planned as a free (ad-supported) service (i.e. google library) is just a ploy to get users for checkout?
i have a hunch that that's the case -- it can't be significantly more expensive to ocr newspapers than their library project is.
or is the charge because they are doing some kind of revenue sharing with the original publication? though that doesn't make sense either.
shooting is not too good for my enemies
todays news is tomorrows fish & chip paper
meaning old news is worthless, good luck getting any money for it when libraries already provide microfiche copies of newspapers going back 200+ years
"The Internet! why get for free at the library what you can pay for here?"
I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
I, for one, would prefer being able to browse the full database
and having google ads instead of having to pay.
IMHO, if google's 'mission' is to make all the world's information available,
then that would be the best way to go!
I don't see how google can make money doing this when competitors like Projecdt Gutenberg (groups releasing free text of material in the public domain) do the same for free. I think google would better position itself by giving free access to limit incentive for free competitors to do the same, and then make their money by selling advertising.
TFA is old news. The service is already launched here: http://news.google.com/archivesearch
v e-search/
Web Owls (a group blog by some Google Answers researchers) has a piece about it: http://web-owls.com/2006/09/06/googles-news-archi
Paid Q&A/Research
This at first sounded like a good idea, but who would really use it? They mention in the article that you could probably find the information online for free anyway. But I think more importantly is the fact that if you really need primary sources from these periods (I will when I go back to uni in october for one of my courses) you would almost certainly have access to them already, through your institutions archives etc... still, I suppose it's good for people who are at a uni without such an expansive archive
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
The library has old newspapers for free.
a ry_of_congress_to_digitize_old_newspapers.php
You can order old newspapers from the Library of Congress FOR FREE.
http://utterlyboring.com/archives/2004/11/23/libr
Although I can't for the life of me work out HOW to get them from the LOC, it's probably hidden deep on their website. If you call 'em up though..
Backuping the World!
Ok, so they started with 200 years old newspapers. How long till they start with 400 - or 4000 years old texts?
Ignore this signature. By order.
The articles may have a price for the first user, but as copyright has lapsed on them since long, either google or wikipedia or someone else can easily create a 'republish' plugin automatically posting such content to a collaborative site.
we used big messy spools of microfilm...AND WE LIKED IT!
So I wonder if Microsoft will try to enforce their patent and charge Google for each conjugated verb used.
I've been meaning to patent a method of recording verbal and non-verbal information using markings with a reasonable contrast to the surface they are applied to. I'm thinking of calling it writing. Guess I'd better get started before Microsoft does it.
...I wait for Slashdot to report the news again! *ducks*
In all seriousness, it's always a good idea to have this information all in one place so you don't have to look for a million results. One thing I liked about my university's library is that they had a portal where you could search all their article databases from one point: You'd get back Lexis-Nexis results, web searches, etc. If Google can do this and tie together trade and scientific journals (say, the APA and thousands of others), then we'll be on our way. Right now one of the other option I can think of is LookSmart's FindArticles, although it seems small at only 10 million articles.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
...then what I want to know is who's going to go back and summarize 200 years worth of newspaper articles?
...Well...
"We are already ahead in this effort...it will not help Google that much...!"
"This is not an end in itself, it's a process..."
"We continue to innovate for our customers..."
"This is not what our customers need..."
Folks, that is Microsoft. MEanwhile, I wish Google all the success.
The duration of U.S. copyright for works created before 1978 is a complex matter; however, works published before 1923 are all in the public domain.
From 1978, 70 years after author's death, I guess lots of things from 1923-1978 era still are copyrighted.
News from 1723 to 1923, then ?
NYT founded in 1851, TIME in 1923, erm I see a problem arising with that last one...
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
While others note that in some cases the information Google seeks to sell may be available somewhere on the net for free, time searching for it is not free. Serious researchers or people who are just plain impatient, will gladly pay for the convenience of one stop shopping from a source they trust. As for the newspapers, a number of them already have paid archive access services, but any arrangement with Google is likely to net them more business and more money without too much more effort.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
This is more like a cool feature, not a very useful one.
I mean, sure, I'd be very happy to browse newspappers aged 1800 on the internet, that's really cool. But if anyone needs some information THAT old, isn't it going to browse archives (real, not the Internet)?
Google need to learn that where the real money is....
is scanning old issues of playboy and charging to view them. lets face it, there is a huge market
but of course, they want to check new business models that checkout has made possible!
anyhow - great initiative!
Stop the brainwash
You go to Google and you get all the publications in one place. Overall, I find myself buying archived articles that when I first read them, I didn't see much value. Years later, it will have some tidbit that is now essential and I will pony up the money because all copies of the article have been archived and deleted or have gone stale.
But, as what happens to other sites that have a "paid version" of an article, will Google still cache the full version?
I do google searches all the time that result in my ending up on a site that wants to charge me to read the article. I hit the back button and click on Google's cached copy and read the whole thing just fine without paying a dime.
That would make my day just a little brighter if Google ends up caching their own paid content.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
As I understand it, when a full text content provider republishes copyright-free works, they copyright their newly bundled publication. So I can't, say, go in to ProQuest Historical Newspapers and download everything and host it providing free access. Further reproduction is prohibited. (But how you can prove you took *their* republished text is another issue I suppose.)
It's why a search for "Alice in Wonderland" in Google Books gets you only a few pages, while Project Gutenberg delivers the whole text. The books in Google (for the copyright-free text) are for copyrighted books (or presentations, rather).
A lot of organizations have made money off of reproducing copyright-free materials. You can reprint government documents (US federal ones are usually copyright-free) and re-sell them, for example. The publisher of the 9-11 report (available freely online, not that it was widely advertised as such) got a real "royalty-free windfall" from the bestseller.
That's old news...
eTrade SUCKS
if the first articles scanned and posted were related to the creation of the Internet.
Reading between the lines of TFA, it's not Google that will scan old news. Real newspaper will do the scanning, but those newspaper will open the otherwise paying-for service for Google to indexing. Then (simplifying a little) Google will point you to the paying service, or - acting as a proxy - collect the fee for smaller newspapers.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Google is not scanning anything. It is merely providing a deep-web metasearch for pre-existing databases such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Guardian Unlimited, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, HighBeam Research and Thomson Gale. These are, for the most part, pay services that until now had to be searched separately. For people like me (a lexicographer) this is great news because it will shave many minutes off of each work day. Now, if they'd also make them affordable to independent scholars...
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
And George Dubya Bush will have Winston modify the old news before you purchase it.
In most bigger libraries they save these newspapers anyway, sometimes even put on microfische to make reading and storage a lot easier.
Penn State's new archive goes back to 1887. I read one of the issues and among other things there is an editorial on why Penn State needs a telegraph line and another decrying the current state of science education.
The more things change....
Monstar L
The AP could have beaten them to this, offering a service that charges $10 a month for basic access, then they could add an arrangement where a blogger could pay them $0.50-$1.00 for a full license to use a particular article on their blog. Once again, institutional arrogance has gotten the better of them.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Well, since I don't have a f*ing credit card, I'm locked out of that service. ...
I could use it if it was ad-supported, though, but I use adblock. That would not support them.
Most of those texts are public domain anyway... but someone has to host and publish them
Oh. Since I'm just thinking about it.
The copyright laws should be modified so that a press article is public domain after, let's say, 2 months for monthly magazines, 2 weeks for weekly, 2 days for daily, etc. counting from first publication date. A site like Project Gutenberg could archive them, and the archives could be legally mirrored on BitTorrent.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
A lot of the source material is gone, gone, gone.
you had me at #!
This is more or less what publishers were afraid of when Google got the idea to do google library. Going to the old, now in public domain, stuff is a good move for google. I guess google thinks that they are ok doing this since tons of microfishe companies already do likewise... BUT, and here'e the kicker, LOTS AND LOTS of spammers use similar tactics that google is using... selling public domain stuff for a profit. I can't count how many ebook advertiesments I've seen that give people the idea to start selling public domain stuff for profit, and how many spammers and sloggers actually do that. Google has become it's own worst enemy, and is using spam to make money now. Probably just a matter of time before everyone realizes what the google toolbar really is, just one huge spyware thing to sell you more ads.
Google is not charging anything for this service, I wish you peeps would get the facts right before posting this crap. The pay part comes in when the articles come from a site requiring payment, such as the NYT articles. Google may plan advertisements but the use of the search and the freely availible articles are still free.
grand gravey
The Making of America project (at Cornell and the University of Michigan) has literally thousands of old newspapers and magazines dating back to the early 19th century. The whole project is infinitely searchable (albeit with a clumsy interface) and it's free.
Links: http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/ [Michigan], http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/ [Cornell].
From what I read from the article, you'd get exactly the same content from these two sites, with a hell of a lot of additional content that Google would exclude.
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
One of the first things I do is look myself up. I have a fairly rare name. As far as I can two other people inthe world share it, plus only a couple hundred share the share the surname.
Most of the material I saw was legal notices such as marriages, deaths and court judgements.
Google is starting to infringe on a couple of companies that already do this kind of thing but they charge for the service. This is exactly what companies like Lexis-Nexis, http://www.lexisnexis.com/?a=g and ProQuest, http://proquest.com/ do as their significant business model. Add to the "search all the old news" the ability to email you a daily report of keyword searches anywhere in your choice of selectable data sources and you have put them out of business. The significant difference is ProQuest built their business on all of the archived dissertations and Thesis of American colleges and Lexis-Nexis built their business on archiving legal andrnment proceedings but both have expanded into newpapers, magazines and TV broadcasts.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Lexis Nexis and ProQuest already have this as a business model. They both started in different areas (ProQuest in Academic research papers and Theis and Lexis-Nexis in government and legal proceedings) but they have both expanded into news print and TV broadcasts.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
example, i buy a beethoven cd, can i then copy and pass it around? not according to them.. ...as there is copyright in sound _recordings_ seperate from the copyright in the music as composed by the composer - although, amazingly, only since 1972 in the United States.
A better example would be sheet music, where there is indeed a concerted effort by publishers to keep works by long-dead composers in copyright by creating new editions and in some cases refusing to sell but only renting the music.
You could always go to the public library and search their microfiche, and print them out for free. The trouble with that is that unless you know what publication you want, and the date, you don't know what to look for. The Google value-ad is the scanning/OCR here; but the Google rip-off is charging for this information. It seems like a coordinated effort by librarians could duplicate this, OSS style. Then the librarians could just make their db publicly available; ironicly enough, Google would crawl it and make it searchable, but if they decided to play hardball, well, there are other search engines you know.
Google Inc. announced the winners of the Google Desktop Gadget Contest. The 3 top place finishers split $8,000 and were decided upon by a panel of judges based on popularity, visual appeal, use of new features and creativity. The first place winner received $5,000, $2,000 for second place, and $1,000 for third place. For more information please visit TechAddress at http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/google -announces-desktop-gadget-winners/
I searched and searched for the TFA in Google News Archive, but the only copy I found says it was published today. Maybe being published today isn't old news enough to get into the archive. Maybe you mean its a dupe, so I checked that too. Sure enough, it's from 1879:
s &hl=en&sa=N&sugg=d&as_hdate=1879
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=google+new
Turned up this summary:
"The streets were thronged to an unusual extent, and every point where news was obtainable was besieged. Contrary to general expectation there were no bulletins displayed at the telegraph offices, and the disappointed crowds which had gathered at those points soon dispersed."
I8-D
just go to a library *shudder*
Something like lexis/nexis is fine but has anybody put online the microfiche of old newspapers that are usually available free in libraries? It would seem to be eminently useful, perhaps not to a certain number of budgeted scholars but that's what people used. I want Google to make money but I also am severely frustrated when an abstracts database (usually science news, IIRC acm, etc.) wants me to pay money for the article. I propose to google that they make different levels of access at different rates so that you can pay a stellar (maybe not so stellar?) rate for ultimate access, whereas free will still give you access to things that usually are free (I'm thinking of the system in Heinlein's Friday). They should start a reference library, or a service to be used in libraries which the libraries can pay for or individuals/companies can also purchase.
Just for that, I think I'm going to go to the local university library and scan in some of their out-of-copyright sheet music, on general principle. I wonder if there's some place to send page images to, since my lilypond skills are laughable.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
uhhh, how is this post offtopic?
Reproductions are not eligible for copyright. Period. See Bridgeman v. Corel . Just because it was difficult to put together doesn't make it copyrightable. See Feist v. Rural .
An arrangement or indexing of public domain works can be copyrighted. But if you take those public domain works and make your own index, you're not infringing on anyone. On the other hand, if there's an agreement or license you must accept to get to the content, they can include clauses like "you may not download this", blah blah blah. There was a huge collection of scanned art that my school had access to, which had draconian restrictions on the use of its scans.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If I remember right there was a company called Proquest http://www.proquest.com/ that already offered what google is trying to do.
With 200 year old articles, certainly the copyright has ended on these. Is there anything stopping people from mirroring Google's paid content for free?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
If you agree to some license to access the information, all bets are off. But if you, for instance, come across a reproduction of a public-domain painting (but not a sculpture, as photographing a sculpture is creative, and scanning a painting is not) in a copyrighted book, you're free to scan that and republish it to your heart's content.
Frequently, publishers lie about this. But despite what they'd like, they can't magically renew the copyright on some content by reprinting it.
Google has plenty of pre-1923 books in snippet view as well. It doesn't mean they're copyrighted. However, the actual page images (if the book has been re-typeset) are copyrightable. If it's just a reproduction of the original (a lot of older works are republished this way), the actual text doesn't get a new copyright on it. Furthermore, even if the book was re-typeset, if you scan and OCR it, you only need to contend with the original copyright on the text itself.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Let's say I bought access to a pre-1900 article, which is in the public domain. Could I then legally repost that for free? The Washington Post says "Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.", but are they lying?
Check our more information on Google's News Archiving service. I have included a couple example results at http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/google -launches-news-archive-search-service
Depending on how much it costs for a hobbyist and history buff like me I'd use it. I already use the archive at theTime Magazine site since I am a print subscriber. It's loads of geeky fun going back and reading articles from 1923 to the present. It's fascinating to read articles about Hitler, Ghandi or the first IBM PC in context as they happened. I for one am hoping it is reasonably priced as I would definitely take advantage of it.
Google Books has two distinct sources, libraries and publishers. If a book is scanned from a library, it is either classified as public domain (1922 or earlier in the US, 1865 or earlier elsewhere), the book is fully viewable a page at a time, and in some cases a PDF of the entire book is also available (presumably Google will provide PDFs of all public domain books eventually). Library books that are not public domain can only be viewed in snippet form, 3 lines at a time. If the book source is provided by a publisher, the publisher determines how much of the book can be viewed, from as little as the title page, table of contents and a sample page, to the entire book. Unfortunately, Google takes the word of the publisher, and if the publisher wants to claim that their copy of "Alice in Wonderland", using the Tenniel illustrations is copyrighted, you're only going to see a few pages.
There are plenty of ways for publishers to add a snippet of copyrighted material to a book, from the cover art and blurb, to a short introduction, but sometimes they just lie and slap on a copyright anyway. I know of at least two companies who appear to be only in the business of reprinting public domain works, claiming copyright and using Google Books to advertise.
Why is no one able to get article summaries right anymore? Slashdot should pay people to fix everyone's mistakes.
Google has no intention of selling anything. The bloody article itself says so. They are going to provide links where you can buy it from the original publisher, many of which sell old news articles. They're not even going to make any money from the service right now. I just tried a few searches, and on every single one, it sends me to the original publishers' site, where I can purchase access to the article.
This site is going downhill.... More and more illiterates seem to be coming here everyday.
Who'll do the scanning since Google hires Phd's (mostly)?
... that has made sooooo much money for the NY Times?