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Amazon, MS, and Yahoo Against Google's Library
anonymousNR writes "From the BBC, 'Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle said.'"
It's about depriving us of access to out of print books. That is all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They coincide when you're not the one with all the control.
I'm fairly sure that the Internet Archive is a nonprofit.
Yep. Ironically Kahle started it the same year Larry Page started the research project which became google.
But, even if it is a non-profit that doesn't mean MS/Yahoo/Amazon aren't supporting it for their own reasons. I just hope Kahle is shrewed enough to milk as much support out of these new-found 'friends' as he can without giving away the cow.
Google's initiative is remarkably one-sided. But a lot of the opposition seems to be from 'old-media' types who want to keep things locked up in dead trees and paywalls rather than a solution that opens up as much information to as many people as possible. Kahle's got the opportunity to do not just the right thing, but the best thing, I hope he can get away with it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If these companies are the only ones with the ability to serve most of the world catalog of books, then we will all be the poorer for it.
Freedom requires that out of copyright books and older books whose legal status is unclear (which is what we're talking about) be scannable/distributable by everyone, or else by no-one.
MS obtain tech generally by stealing it, and lately by buying it.
Yahoo has NEVER had any real decent tech that it developed. For example, yahoo made heavy use of Perl and BSD.
Same for Amazon.
All have ridden on the coattails of real giants.
Mod away your fan bois.
University all access passes for their libraries and students.
Access to orphan books.
Easy for authors to claim rights and be compensated.
Easy reading on computers, mobile devices, and e-readers.
If you guys can accomplish all this as quickly and completely as Google will, I'll support you.
Because when you have access so much information controlled by one organization, you are wholly at the mercy of that organization. If Google decides that they don't want you reading some book for whatever reason, then you're shit out of luck unless you've got a hard copy of it. When you have an organization comprised of and accountable to several organizations, then you [ostensibly] have a lesser chance of shit like that happening.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
None of the companies in this coalition had the balls to step up and do this themselves.
Do what themselves? Get sued and settle?
I don't think that anyone would object if terms of the settlement were universally applied to everyone - so that e.g. Amazon could also go pay some reasonable fee to provide out-of-print books, and compete with Google. But as it is, it's clearly not a level playing field anymore.
If Google decides that they don't want you reading some book for whatever reason, then you're shit out of luck unless you've got a hard copy of it.
So.. kinda like if Google did nothing?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well, there's no real official way into the market. If they just started violating copyright, it's possible someone might file a class-action lawsuit against them, and possible they might be able to negotiate some sort of settlement similar to the one Google got. But it's not at all clear that that would be the outcome. Google's basically found a very clever way of using the class-action mechanism's preclusion to violate the copyright of people who haven't agreed, because class-action lawsuits are opt-out rather than opt-in.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Seriously, I'd much prefer an open database of scanned works rather than letting one company negotiate a deal.
It is a nontrivial exercise to obtain high-quality scans of 20+ million books. The scanning must be done non-destructively, since nearly all of these books are out of print. This means someone/something turning pages and taking pictures. It costs most archivists hundreds of dollars to scan each book this way. Which is fine if you're the Brewster Kahle trying to compile a very small collection. If you want to do a complete job of it, it costs hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions -- and that's if you get the scanning technology and QC pipeline right.
The question is: Who pays all that money to do the scanning?
I'm guessing Brewster Kahle would prefer that the US Government fund it. Maybe that would be nice, but I don't think it's particularly realistic. Other than that, only Google has stepped up to this effort. Microsoft quit theirs last year. If Google thought they had no legal basis to use this material, or make any money from it, I guarantee they would stop the scanning in an instant. They aren't stupid after all.
I'm guessing the "Open Book Alliance" has no intent to invest the scale of effort needed to pull this off. They're just trying to shoot torpedoes at Google.
The thing is, any one of these groups has the ability to strike a deal with the author's guild. Google doesn't have an exclusive license. All they have to do is get up in a business Google's adopted and out-compete them in quality of service.
I can see why they'd rather fight it out in court, but that doesn't mean I favor their cause.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not that investing money and energy implies quality. Google's scanned books are very low quality, as a matter of fact. If you'd like to see good quality scans, try pointing your browser at the Center for Retrospective Digitization of Goettingen University for example.
The problem though isn't money or energy for scanning, there's plenty of that around. The problem is legal, as in Google have an exclusive agreement with the American Author's Guild, so others are not allowed to play. That's the problem here.
Maybe you believe in capitalism? In that case, don't forget that every time some one company has an exclusive right to exploit a resource, it inevitably leads to low quality, expensive junk passed off as gold.
I'd rather have competition. If there cannot be competition because of the law, then the law should be changed, or there should be no access until the pressure builds to change the laws.
Q: How does one produce a digital copy of a book?
A: One person scans the book, and 50 million people download it.
The cost is therefore negligible.
Wrong. Google have a "free pass" on scanning anything they like, because they settled a class action with the American Author's Guild. Nobody else gets a free pass, and that's wrong. Either Google should not get a free pass, or everybody should get a free pass.
What is the point of google books really?
They dont make any free books freely available and only link to "buy this now" even for books and scans that are public domain globally.
I can seriously not find any books on google books that are available freely that are published prior to ca 1830. Perhaps 1830 is the cutoff when their "I sell public domain books for profit" partners have agreed on with google?
For example this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9zuFXqw12hUC&q=strindberg&dq=strindberg&lr=
This book, published in 1919 is public domain in sweden, the us, europe, australia, ...
I can only find a "snippet view" and a link to where i can buy this book from a google partner.
Why cant i download the scans, as I can from TIA.
Great news that TIA get support from those three companies. TIE does a great job preserving history and books for us. Google books, less so.
GO TIA GO!
They may be but Amazon, MS and Yahoo are not and they stand to benefit from this too. They're not doing it for the non-profit.
The ad program was to make sure you knew what Bing! was, not to make sure you use it. They obviously succeeded (though you are likely someone who would have encountered it anyway).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Google's attitude to copyright is 'infringe and pay up if we're caught'. They are not pushing for copyright reform, they are just pushing for Google to get better terms than everyone else.
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People used to form alliances to fight Microsoft. Now Microsoft is joining an alliance to fight Google. What is it he wrote in The Road Ahead about death coming swiftly to the market leader?
Does this