The Catch-22 of Google Books
It’s almost a Zen Koan: How many books does a library make?
For Google the answer is: “All of them.”
As of last August that particular number was about 129 million, and since then probably tens of thousands have been added to the world’s shelves, even if you exclude Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s A Shore Thing.
Some tiny fraction of that immense number is good enough for nearly every library in the world, be it the Library of Congress, the world’s largest, or modest locations which are no less devoted to the preservation and dispensation of the world’s collected knowledge.
For Google, though, it’s all or nothing: The Google Books Project — “one company’s audacious attempt to create the largest and most comprehensive library in the history of the world” as wired.com correspondent Ryan Singel put it — began nearly a decade ago.
The initiative has seen its up and downs over the years. But it hit a serious roadblock last week when a judge ruled that a difficultly-forged agreement among Google, authors and publishers was simply unfair to a particular class of writers: those who cannot not be located to be given the opportunity to choose to allow their copyrighted works be included in the project.
As luck would have it, these so-called orphan works represent a significant portion of the world’s collected knowledge. Google hasn’t said how many it thinks there are, but one academic believes it might total 70 percent — some 90 million works.
Google turns scanned books back into paper
Google’s plan to digitize copyrighted books is under legal attack.******But the Internet giant is stepping up its PR offensive to convince consumers of the benefits wrought by its broader book scanning project.******Exhibit A: the Espresso Book Machine.******The contraption pictured here can produce bound paperback books, from hard-to-find works of literature to little-known cookbooks, in a matter of minutes.****** The machine itself is not Google’s; it’s the creation of On Demand Books. On Wednesday, the companies announced a deal giving On Demand and its Espresso Machine access to Google’s digital library of 2 million public domain titles.******Until now, the works digitized by Google were available only as digital files for reading on computer screens or electronic readers. With the Espresso machine, the companies say, consumers will be able to bury their noses in old-fashioned, hardcopy versions of their desired books – many of which have been have been out of print for years.******On Demand Books says it currently has 16 of its book-making machines at bookstores, libraries and other locations and plans to have 34 of the machines (which are priced starting at $75,000) next year.******The machine will only crank out books from Google’s archive with expired copyrights, which in the United States means they were published before 1923. Google is currently seeking court approval of a settlement with groups representing publishers and authors regarding its use of scanned copyrighted books.
Google stole the work done at http://www.gutenberg.org and presented it as owned by google. This is such a blatant theft. The courts should shut google down, it has long since lost the purpose of a search engine and become a search engine of advertisements. Such a shame such a good, worthy idea would go to hell.
@Vibes: That’s pretty much what the Author’s Guild settlement does — and Chin said ‘notice’ was fine.
Under the agreement (which cost Google $125 million), there is no time limitation to make a claim whatsoever, and any money Google collects is held in escrow for an legitimate rights-holder who emerges, whenever that is.