Google's Academic TB Swap Project

eldavojohn writes "Google is transferring data the old fashioned way — by mailing hard drive arrays around to collect information and then sending copies to other institutions. All in the name of science & education. From the article, 'The program is currently informal and not open to the general public. Google either approaches bodies that it knows has large data sets or is contacted by scientists themselves. One of the largest data sets copied and distributed was data from the Hubble telescope — 120 terabytes of data. One terabyte is equivalent to 1,000 gigabytes. Mr. DiBona said he hoped that Google could one day make the data available to the public.'"

Comments

Re:so..

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Whos going to own the data?

As always the people of the world own the data. The copyright holders are, however, given a short term monopoly on making copies of it, with certain exceptions.

I hope Google isnt going to say they do like they want to with the old books theyre scanning.

Google has not, as far as I know, claimed "ownership" or even copyright on anything they've scanned. They have, however, created their own database of metadata about the works, which they use to enable people to more easily find specific items in the original data.

Everytime you download a hubble picture will it have a google watermark?

Umm, maybe. Why do I care if they add watermarks to it? If they are in the way, I'll just get them from another source that does not add watermarks. Google can also provide free copies of public domain pictures from other sources with Google advertising slogans on them if they want. It's called "freedom."