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.
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
In my experience with the LOC, nothing is free. 20 cents for a copy. $100/hr for a transfer of video. Cannot actually check out books. Unless you work for a congressman then you get better access. While it is a comprehensive resource, everything is a pain in the ass.
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.
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
That's because there's an existing valid copyright on that recording of that orchestra's performance of the piece. If you rip an out-of-copyright 78 or wax cylinder recording, or record your own performance on kazoo, you can share to your heart's content.
From what I understand, *Google* isn't going to charge for ALL content. Rather, Google will list stories held at subscription services (ie NYT, Guardian etc), alongside those available for free.
Its then upto you to decide which you'd rather read and\or pay for.
Google makes their money with Ad-Words and sponsorship.