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Librarians Express Concern Over Google Books
angry tapir writes "Many libraries routinely delete borrower information, and organizations such as the American Library Association have fought hard to preserve the privacy of their patrons in the face of laws such as the US Patriot Act. But now, as more and more titles become available in Google Book Search, it's not clear whether digital readers will enjoy the same privacy protections they have at the library."
Ha!
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Don't these hard copy books still exist after Google has "digitized" them? If you re concerned over your privacy, simply go to the physical library as you would have before the digitization.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Whether it's your G-Mail contact list, your search history, or what books you check out from from their "library," your data is Google's stock in trade. This is the price of "free." For most people, it's a much better than even proposition. For the paranoid and privacy conscious, it's a deal breaker. And the notion that Google is providing this information to the US government is merely an urban myth, so get that idea right out of your head this instant...
Of course they do. They desperately try to find a reason why libraries should continue to exist.
I have worked in a few libraries, public and private, both as paid or volunteer help, and don't know of any that deleted user information or information on who checked out books.
They may of archived the information and removed it from the main databases but the information was still available for years after the event.
The most a library really needs to record are who are the last 2 people who checked out material, after that you there is no way of proving someone else damaged it. If you want metrics on the types or specific information on the number of check-outs that can be done without attaching a specific user to a piece of material.
Few places have a legal requirement that libraries store user information and if they did not store if beyond what is needed to track who has something checked out or could of damaged material they would not have problems in proving this information since it would not exist.
... make books downloadable (PDF) and have some sort of obfuscation mechanism, it won't make untrackable but nothing really is. Just existing in the world means you can be tracked if the right pressure is put on the right people and they have the power to get away with it.
"... But now, as more and more titles become available in Google Book Search, it's not clear whether digital readers will enjoy the same privacy protections they have at the library..."
Why not let users decide. If privacy concerns are paramount then users will not use Google Books. I am sure there is a sizable number of users who are not bothered by privacy concerns. These are probably the same folks who put all their lives on Facebook, 250 million strong to date.
Google is making the books searchable with one intent in mind, to know what you are searching for, so they can offer relevant ads and targeted marketing leads.
I, for one, am getting really fed up with people trying to get in the way of Google, and others making more information available, for free. And on the thinest pretexts. There is a huge difference between protecting the public right to privacy, as has recently ocured here in Switzerland and this endless carping by libraries and copyright holders about orphaned books etc. In the UK a condition of copyright in a requirement to offer a small number of copies to the so called Copyright libraries eg the British Museum.
If we are serious about scholarship in the internet age we must do something similar, allow google and others to scan and index books provide short extracts free for fair use while selling complete electronic copies through retailers. The same for learned journals.
Every time I hear nonsense from libraries, journal providers and content providers (think Murdoch) I smell hipocracy and corruption thick in the air.
I misread that three times as "Liberians" and I couldn't figure out why they would care about a bunch of English books being on Google.
I don't see why it matters...
"What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one..."
And he was right...
This sounds to me like nothing more than the librarians trying to keep their jobs. While I don't disagree with that, I would appreciate it if they wouldn't take us for fools and try to wrap this up as some sort of "mission" they're on. Some honesty and transparency would get them more support.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
... read "privacy" as "piracy"?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I think people need to be more worried about ISP's handing over information about the sites you visit and the content/recipients of the e-mails you exchange, rather than what online books you look at. THAT point kind of reminds me of the Who guitarist getting in trouble for visiting a child porn site, then getting off (no pun intended) because he said he was just doing "research".
My birthday is in early october, and I'm not worried about it. Mind you I don't really think here is any validity in astrology anyway...
...and "more titles" as "more titties"?
To think that a digital user of any product will retain the same or more privacy than the analog equivalent is simply ridiculous.
April 28, 2005, American Librarians Association President Carol Brey - Casiano responds to Oversight Hearing on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act
"Using the public library is one of the benefits of living in our free and democratic society. The First Amendment promises everyone in the United States a fundamental right of free speech and free inquiry. Every person is entitled to read anything about a topic or opinion without the government looking over his or her shoulder. When there is evidence of a crime or evidence that a crime is about to be committed, law enforcement officers can obtain search warrants and subpoenas permitting them to access the records of the suspected criminal.
"Library patrons use our nation's libraries with an expectation of privacy because in 48 states, laws declare that a person's library records are private and confidential; the remaining two states, Kentucky and Hawaii, have attorneys' general opinions recognizing the confidentiality of library records. All of these laws existed before the USA PATRIOT Act was enacted.
"The USA PATRIOT Act preempts the privacy protections provided by state library confidentiality laws, which balance protection of library patron records with the needs of law enforcement. Because the USA PATRIOT Act does not require the FBI to name an individual or to give specific reasons to believe he is engaged in terrorism, Section 215 has the potential to open patrons' reading and research records to a 'fishing expedition.'
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Google books, OTOH, is just a collection of pages. The pages you read are part of their database, which they will use to understand and better serve the user, and, if the committee on un-American affairs come knocking, will likely give up quite willingly. Furthermore, while modern database search has become very easy, researching a topic is still not trivial. Serious searches will still turn up more trivia than useful fact. If we confuse google with a library, there is a chance that our educational opportunities might become limited. The child that wants to read about their emerging sexuality, for example, instead of just playing it out through naked pictures, may not be able to do so. This is an unknown thing,and there is nothing wrong with thinking about ramifications, as long as we realize this thing is going to happen no matter what.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Google, the world's largest non-evil corporation, has released Google Books Stalkertude(tm), which allows you to share your location, your reading, your DNA and your tastes in porn in real time with your dearest friends from all your social networks and blogs, that guy your friend gave your LiveJournal username to when you were both drunk and anyone you've ever sent or received a message to or from on GMail. And your boss.
Google Books Stalkertude(tm) allows you to broadcast where you are and what you're thinking about at all times. It supports all current smartphones except that stupid iThing from Cupertino. If you're using Google Chrome, you can automatically share your location from your laptop too! The laptop maintains and archives a complete record of your life in text, video and audio form with the twelve built-in webcams and microphones dotted around the casing, plus samples of your DNA from the keys. The data is transmitted to the Google servers for your comfort and convenience and remains absolutely and entirely confidential between you and Google's marketing department. Tasteful and understated text ads are subliminally woven into the display pixels.
Privacy features are important to Google Books Stalkertude(tm). You can trust us with your entire life record, even as we argue in court over Google StreetView that privacy doesn't exist in the modern world. Besides, better we have your complete dossier than Microsoft, right? And we'll only give it to the government if they, like, ask for it or something. That we've gathered so much data on you in the first place is in no way a danger to you. We promise we won't tell your husband, and that's what counts.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
"the American Liberians Association have fought hard to preserve the piracy of their patrons in the face of laws such as the US Patriot Act. But now, as more and more titties become available..."
Dyslexia in action.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Candlestick makers upset with Edison.
Respect the Constitution
Google doesn't want to have to deal with subpoenas for information any more than libraries do. That's why they anonymize the data after nine months.
Since Google Books theoretically tracks IP addresses, I guess now if you want to read books and not be tracked you need to go to your local library and use their terminals.
I hope your my local library allows pseudonyms on the sign-in sheet. Remind me to NOT walk in front of the ATM machine as I enter, NOT take the toll road to get there, and NOT use a check or credit card when paying for gas on the way home.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Librarians are also concerned because they see the writing on the wall. Libraries may not be needed in the near future. We have the technology today to make every book in existence available to every human on the planet, and in an instantly-searchable format. This is the sort of thing a global Renaissance is made of! The only thing holding humanity back, at this point, is politics. We have IP law that relies on artificial scarcity. This is the opposite of what the goal of IP should be.
The purpose of IP law should be to encourage science and the useful arts while making their benefits available to everyone.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The term is Legal Deposit Libraries: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2003/ukpga_20030028_en_1
"Duty to deposit
1 Deposit of publications
(1) A person who publishes in the United Kingdom a work to which this Act applies must at his own expense deliver a copy of it to an address specified (generally or in a particular case) by any deposit library entitled to delivery under this section. "
If you're that paranoid, you better not even take your own car!
If they stopped flusing so much of their operational budget on M$ problems and products they libraries would have more money and more time to work with that money. Seriously, nearly every action or function of M$ has gone against the ALA Bill of Rights.
Sure there are potential concerns with Google Books. These are small compared to the ongoing, increasing problems posed by M$ products and methods. Librarians have been standing by and in some cases helping M$ flunkies to increase the Digital Divide rather than close it.
Then again, Google is a technical or legal problem. Microsoft is a people problem.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yesterday members of Americans United for Privacy of Readership took out a procession in Forbes Avenue, carrying placards denouncing the plans announced by Andrew Carnegie to found a library in each incorporated county in America using his private funds.
The president of the advocacy group Book P Ublisher, owner of a popular bookstore in the Fifth Avenue, said that "Right now, Americans buy a book, they pay cash and there is no record of what anyone is reading. In the new system proposed by Andrew Carnegie, there will be huge amount of record keeping and there will be ledgers which will record who borrowed which book and kept it for how long. And anyone, including the jackbooted thugs of the federal government can see the reading habits of the population and the data will be available from one central location for each county.
Further this system is highly inimical to the interests of the book publishers. They publish books with the expectation that the book will be read by the buyer and his friends and family alone and anyone else wanting to read the book will have purchase a fresh copy. The idea of one person buying just one copy and circulating it to be read by multiple unrelated unknown persons is little more than theft of the intellectual property. The book publishing and selling industry will collapse if the idea of libraries gains any ground.
The Publishing Industry Association of America, claims that a book is never sold, but is only licensed to be viewed by one pair of eye balls. Other people looking at the same book is considered a violation of the Analog Millennium Copyright Act of 1900.
Pittsburgh Gazette, Aug 31, 1903
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
and more about e-books that are being bought. Google book is nothing more than a search engine. But, companies like MSN, Amazon, AOL, etc are giving out the information to the feds per the patriot act.
used by libraries to deal with circulation are,.... just that. proprietary.
you have -no idea- what they are doing on the back end, hidden in their code.
and many librarians dont even know what the programs are doing 'out in the open' in database tables. look at the next issue of 2600 if you want more info.
It's pretty clear they won't. And Google always reserves the right to change the terms.
You mean the kind of privacy that gets you on the FBI's watch-list if you checkout books like the Anarchist's cookbook?
First of all brick and mortar libraries will never go away because homeless people still need a safe place to sleep. That being said, If these orphan books are public domain, Don't they have every right to scan the books themselves? Why not just offer a competing service, instead of complaining about every little thing Google does.
I was wondering what the real issues are around all of this privacy nonsense on borrowing books given that there really is no such thing as privacy. Isn't the issue really about how that presenting a digital format for everything impacts the professions of librarians and archivists as well as radically altering the publishing industry?
None of the DRM schemes have prevented anyone who is determined to remove them from doing so in the music and film industries although it has penalized those who wouldn't "pirate" those materials with a slew of unplayable/unviewable content unless the consumer wants to upgrade their CD/DVD player everytime a new version of DRM is released. However, if the materials are freely available with no concern of damage or loss to the materials, then doesn't it follow that costs across the board will be lowered and the need for draconian measures like DRM go away? Authors/artists could be paid royalties based on views or some other metric and the whole piracy argument goes away because it doesn't make sense.
Thoughts, comments, appreciated.
And to be sure there are other library patrons present before using the terminal.
But yes, the solution is to launder your identity, be it accessing Google Books from a library, a business with free WiFi, or at some random open access point. You could even leave the laptop under the car's seat to automatically download to avoid appearing on surveillance with a computer.
Or just use Tor.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If Google's privacy standards are lower than those of libraries, how long will it be before merely visiting a library brings you to the attention of some government drone? And then, of course, that question most beloved of fascists and the morally incompetent is asked: "If you don't have anything to hide, what's the big deal?"
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You should know when you go to a library that you could be tracked via GPS, watched via satellite, recorded by video cameras, and then have information retained on what books you checked out. Same goes for the web. You can be tracked wherever you go and whatever you view. You can make it more difficult for them to find your data, but you can't make it impossible. As soon as everyone stops worrying about what they are doing on the toilet and what books they are reading, people will be much better off.
Google already has a opt-out solution for all you privacy-doubters.
Privacy is restored by piracy
in libraries. Older non-automated circulation systems tracked you better and more permanently than automated systems do today. One system was a 'signature' system where you signed for books and showed ID. Those signature sheets were kept in back room filing cabinets for years. In theory you could find a person on a signature sheet, track the corresponding numbers on the books' permanent record card, and find out which books had been checked out years ago.
Another system used library card numbers written into a slip attached to the book itself. These slips stayed in the book until they were filled up. It would be a trivial matter to look inside the cover of the book, note the library card numbers, and look them up.
Modern library circulation systems have been written to comply with librarian-written RFPs. I have never seen such an RFP that did NOT contain a statement very much like this: "Upon check-in of material any link between patron and item shall be permanently erased." The only time a history of check-outs is kept is for Outreach patrons, generally disabled and elderly library patrons who are personally served by library employees. These people tend to be voracious readers who can easily 'read out' a given section of books. A reading record is kept to ensure these employees do not re-send a book that has already been read, though frankly, may of them would not know nor care if that happened.
These automation systems are now pervasive in libraries. When the authorities come in to ask about reading records, which they do, the librarians simply say, 'We do not have such information available and we cannot help you.' There are normally policies in place passed by a Board of Trustees that spell out the fact that librarians SHOULD NOT do so, but this is backed up by the automation systems that make it so they CANNOT do so.
The only way you could get at historical information would be to restore a back-up. These will generally be overwritten over time. I've run many such systems. My back-up strategy was: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-1 through Friday-5. The 5th Friday allowed about a three month window before it was overwritten. Since every backup was a frozen moment in time, the likelihood of pinning a particular patron's reading is slim. Further, doing so would completely disrupt current library operations. The FBI or whomever would have to enlist the cooperation of the library or manage to duplicate the exact state of the system elsewhere. I'd like to see them do that.
Of course, you still have to deal with the paranoid among us. Even with RFID systems there are folks who maintain that the FBI COULD stand outside the library with a portable recorder, scan everyone walking out of the library, and therefore, mysteriously, find out what books people were reading by looking up the books. As a result, libraries have eliminated indexes by barcode (the only ID on the RFID device, and even gone so far as to disguise the barcode in such a way as to NOT identify the library it came from.
For the record, library barcodes are normally in Codabar format. The first number "2" denotes a patron barcode; a "3" denotes an item. A "1" is a 'command' and is archaic. The next four numbers denote the library itself, so '9068' denotes Kitsap Regional Library system in Bremerton, Washington. 9,999 other library systems can have similar formats. The next 8 numbers give you 10 million item numbers. The last number is a check digit. If you disguise the '9068' then the barcode is not unique and could be from any of 10,000 libraries and belong to any of 10,000 items.
There are always people who will insinuate that the vendors of library automation systems are secretly embedding tracking technology without the libraries' knowledge, that their systems have been hacked by the NSA, or that libraries are not 'doing enough' to protect patrons' privacy. As far as I'm concerned, libraries have; and if you don't like the current system, we can always return to a non-automated system which will abs
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
These are probably the same folks who put all their lives on Facebook, 250 million strong to date.
Puh-leez. There are 250 million "members" because when I have a free minute, I troll through the pictures of hot 19 year old girls. Of course, you have to "join" to do so. Since I always forget the temporary accounts I use to do this, I make a new one each time. Multiply by the other 10 million lurkers and you'll soon have 250 million members, and more than a dozen may be actual customers.
you could be tracked via GPS, watched via satellite, recorded by video cameras, and then have information retained on what books you checked out
I can't be tracked via GPS (I have an ANONYMOUS tracfone).
There are no video cameras near the Public Library.
They retain minimal info and purge when you return books.
I CAN be watched via satellite, but the timing would be critical (and unlikely because of the tiny amounts of traffic and low visibility due to dense forest and typical weather).
So for me, the same does NOT go for the web. There is a LARGE difference between the amount of tracking possible.
"And Google just loves people like you", how dare you be so god dammed insolent, if you can not keep be civil be quiet.
Google has, once again, tried to contribute to the available knowledgebase for mankind, and will spend a lot of money scanning, OCR-ing and Indexing the worlds libraries, for the vast public good, maybe re-creating a modern Library of Alexandria, which, with modern technology cannot ever be destroyed again.
You and other American short sighted creeps, who cannot see benefit to human progress from the freedom and codification of all human knowledge should crawl back into the darkened holes in the earth wherein you studied for your MBAs and LLDs and with your CPAs from the big 4 accounting firms have done more to damage to the Economy and Trust than you can imagine.
Put your own house, Law, Patent, Copyright and Intellectual Property law in order first, and do not EVER AGAIN, dare to lecture those of us who live in honest, law abiding countries.
We are terminally fed up with your arrogance, stupidity and failed methodologies.
You have the Sherman and Lanham acts to deal with monopoly, when I see them being used aginst AT&T, M$, the RIAA & MPAA cartels and the idiots that brought us ISO OOXML by publically corrupting ISO I might listen, but in reality you are OVER, you have destroyed your educational system and business, enjoy becomming the newest third world country!
I cannot say this kindly, We do not all live/want to live in the USA. Your Ideas and Politics are now so corrupted from the 24/7 cable news and radio talk shows that all you all do is repeat "talking points" to each other.
... because the cleaners clean!
You have a constitution, separation of powers and apparently a democracy, but in reality you have a hopelessly corrupt Congress, an inefficient and ineffective Executive and a Supreme Court which sits, unable to effect reform, of the most broken legal system in the world. You are a public laughing stock.
Now since I am not a citezen of the USA, far be it from me to tell you how to fix your system, but your worries of demagoguery sit far better on Bush+Cheney than Obama, the former running a horse and cart through your own Constitution daily, before plunging you into the bigest financial disaster for a centuary. An still you cannot unite, over any meaningful issue to help save your country. Bad and false, in the German meaning, regulation got you into the financial mess.
You need working education and effective health care more than most, but your congresscritters continue to lie about the state of US healthcare, and don't talk to me about education. Your health care system is good third world, at best, and it costs you an arm and a leg; I live in Switzerland, one of the highest cost countries in the first word but my "krankenkasse versicherung" is half what I would pay in the USA, drugs likewise and We do not have constant NEOSARCOMEL infections eg MRSA, e-difficile in our hospitals
You can look at some community-designed catalogs, like the ones at Project Gutenberg or Librivox, to see how that would work out. They're not the kind you'd get from an actual library, but they're good enough for most purposes. Like you said--it works fairly well.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
...and should go the way of the do-do bird.
Short sighted American creeps like the ones who founded google perhaps? I can't imagine how you managed to write that post without noticing the blatant hypocrisy.
Perhaps you can demonstrate your awareness of your belief in the freedom and codification of all human knowledge. Please inform us of your home address, bank account details, phone and email accounts and the relevant details of all family and close friends.... Wait, let me guess, that data doesn't count.