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What Ever Happened To Google Books?
An anonymous reader writes: Tim Wu at the New Yorker wonders about the present and future of Google Books. He calls it the most ambitious library project of our time — it seemed so promising when it started. Google developed the requisite technology, made the necessary partnerships to get it done, and put ridiculous amounts of effort into it. Despite their accomplishment, Google Books is merely a shadow of what it could have been. They just couldn't fight through the intellectual property issues that arose. "If Google was, in truth, motivated by the highest ideals of service to the public, then it should have declared the project a non-profit from the beginning, thereby extinguishing any fears that the company wanted to somehow make a profit from other people's work.
Unfortunately, Google made the mistake it often makes, which is to assume that people will trust it just because it's Google. For their part, authors and publishers, even if they did eventually settle, were difficult and conspiracy-minded, particularly when it came to weighing abstract and mainly worthless rights against the public's interest in gaining access to obscure works. Finally, the outside critics and the courts were entirely too sanguine about killing, as opposed to improving, a settlement that took so many years to put together, effectively setting the project back a decade if not longer."
Unfortunately, Google made the mistake it often makes, which is to assume that people will trust it just because it's Google. For their part, authors and publishers, even if they did eventually settle, were difficult and conspiracy-minded, particularly when it came to weighing abstract and mainly worthless rights against the public's interest in gaining access to obscure works. Finally, the outside critics and the courts were entirely too sanguine about killing, as opposed to improving, a settlement that took so many years to put together, effectively setting the project back a decade if not longer."
Just fyi for the public, the lawsuit against Google Books was dismissed.
Google successfully used fair use as a defense and all claims were denied.
Personal profits to Google aside, they also scored a major precedent that will pave the way for future orphan works revivals.
The last time somebody tried this was the Library of Alexandria which required the dictates and commands of several kings. Even then they had to pay money to the Athenians to get some documents.
Well, that was because the Library wanted to make a copy of the original manuscripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Athens was reluctant to allow the manuscripts to be sent to Alexandria (presumably they would've preferred to have them copied in Athens), but ultimately allowed it provided that the Library provided a cash deposit to ensure the safe return of the manuscripts.
Instead, predictably, the Library kept the originals and returned the copies, and was happy to forfeit the money, which was almost 500 kilograms of silver.
The normal M.O. of the Library was just to require that all documents going through Alexandria be available for copying by the Library, and to be a major port and trading hub so that a lot of documents happened to pass through.
It all worked pretty well (for a library that relied on hand-copying, the printing press not being invented yet) until some assholes burned the place down.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.