Unlike Google, Yahoo! has set off into the book scanning minefield without detonating any explosions....What [authors and publishers aggrieved with Google] really mean is that Google has got stuff, if not for free, then at a bargain price. Libraries had to pay for licenses or physical material: Google only pays for the scanning - which is an extremely good deal for Google. As Seth Finkelstein reminds us: "Consider that this is not Google contributing to culture. It's Google trying to supplant the publishers as the middleman business between authors and readers," he wrote. So what at first looks like a copyright issue on closer examination is really a compensation issue. Just as we've seen with music. There is no copyright crisis.
Librarians already make material available through computer networks, and so see computer networks as a good thing. Authors and publishers have no objection to their works being available digitally - to a wider audience - so long as it doesn't mean the wholesale destruction of value. There are few problems of this nature that can't be solved by the happy sound of coins rolling across a table. So at some stage the new would-be gatekeepers such as Google and Yahoo! will do the decent thing and pay for licenses to use the content, along with a coherent compensation model for the material. A digital license for all of us to use this material, would of course be better value - and avoid the risk of a Google tomorrow slipping into the role of a Time Warner today.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/04/2005 11:44:00 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.
