Philip Jones, Bloomsbury Exec Warns Against Google Print, The Book Standard, April 20, 2005. Excerpt: 'Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton has warned UK publishers to beware the blandishments of Internet search engine Google. Newton argued that the project to digitize books and allow the content to be searched on Google could lead to the "Napsterization" of the publishing industry. The comment preceded a presentation of the Google Print project at the PA's annual general meeting, held today (April 19) in London. Newton said that he was "surprised" that a commercial organization such as Google had been invited to address the audience of PA members, which included representatives from all of the UK's major publishers. He warned: "We are being given an opportunity to undermine our industry. It may not seem inherently scary at the moment. But my concern is what this will lead to in 10 years. We are opening a Pandora's Box, and we have no idea where it will lead. We just don't know, once they have this material, what they will do with it." Tom Turvey, strategic partner development for Google, who has been marketing the Google Print project to publishers in the UK over the past few weeks, said that it was not in the business of upsetting its publisher partners. "The contracts are very specific about what we are allowed to do and not do. We have zero interest in riding roughshod over publishers who have signed up for the program. If it's not working, publishers can pull the books from the site." He stressed that Google had security in place to respect international copyright restrictions, and to prevent users from downloading the full text.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/21/2005 11:57:00 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.
