I’m a publisher on the record on my blog as opposing the two U.S lawsuits --one from the Association of American Publishers, the other from the Author’s Guild-- seeking to enjoin Google from scanning books currently under copyright. The core of my opposition comes from a strongly-held belief that the public domain is imperiled --not so much by the US courts (although they’ve not been perfect), and not entirely by Congress (though they offend again and again, chiefly in the continued extensions of the copyright term, and increasingly in their attitudes towards technology, expressed most recently in the DMCA), but in the actual practice of the law. There is no system of public defenders for librarians, teachers, and creative artists as they seek to make fair use of copyrighted works....Because Google’s activities will likely expand the public domain, rendering the world’s books (let’s hope in more languages than just English), I oppose the efforts to legally shut them down. But this should not be equated with complete support for Google, now or in the future....I would certainly, had I my druthers, seek to negotiate with Google, and would not propose that publishers simply sit back and applaud Google....[T]here are other forces out there, competing with Google, and one can see well-capitalized corporate publishers realizing they can’t sit on their hands (or their authors’ hands) any more. Although, without Google forcing their hands, they would have continued to do nothing....While large-scale corporate copyright holders’ strategy of suing Google and running into the arms of Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo is appalling shortsighted, it would nevertheless be naïve to see Google as our savior.....Should we be more worried about authors unwillingly having their works scanned by Google and put online --or should we fear that writers who would otherwise be willing would be unable to have them scanned for free, indexed and put online, with links to where they may be bought (if in print) or borrowed (if available in libraries)?...If the economic history of content distribution is anything to go by, what authors and (most) publishers have to fear is being ignored by large corporations with a profit motive. So while I would not propose that we simply say ‘Thank you, Daddy to Google’, we would be massively naïve to think they’re the enemy --it’s about time someone paid attention to us.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/15/2005 11:45:00 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.
