While I was writing a review (to appear soon) of John Battelle’s prescient book The Search, I noticed something on the copyright page. Here it is:
The scanning, uploading, and disstribution ofo t his books via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
This warning seems directly aimed at Google Book Search, a project which intends to scan the collections of some of the world’s great libraries and make them searchable online. Now you can find similar language on the copyright page of lots of books but John Battelle is a known strong supporter of the value of having almost everything searchable as anyone who reads either his book or his blog knows. So I emailed John and asked him about the apparent contradiction.He said the decision was the publisher’s (Penguin) decision to make but “I totally disagree with it.”Of course, at the time he signed his contract with Penguin, no one knew that this issue would exist.He readily agreed to talk to me it.
Q: “Why didn’t Penguin want your book to be in Google Book Search?”
John: “They’re suing Google over Book Search. They’re part of the Publisher’s Association suit.”
Q:“What are they afraid of?”
John: “They’re afraid of the future.Afraid of what they don’t know…. It’s very irritating to me.” [...]
Q: “How do you think this issue will be resolved in the far future - not the lawsuit but the underlying issue?”
John: “Publishers should be service providers and let authors make these decisions.”He went on to say that, now that the Internet and fast computers exist, you don’t need to make decisions like this en masse; you don’t need huge corporate entities making a one-size-fits-all decision.; authors themselves can choose from a myriad options.This one of the principles of his newly formed Federated Media.
Comment. (1) Battelle's solution is the simplest and easiest. Let authors decide. (2) At least publishers who make this decision without consulting authors, and over the dissent of authors, should not pretend to speak for authors. As Evslin points out later in the interview, "the last sentence of Penguin’s prohibition – 'Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.' – seem particularly hypocritical." (3) Penguin has let Lawrence Lessig provide open access to the entire text of Free Culture under a CC license. Why can't it take the much smaller step of letting John Battelle let Google make his book searchable and discoverable?
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/10/2006 09:52:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
