Google is being sued by the Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers (and possibly some other people by now since it took me awhile to put this article together) over a new project called Google Print (whose name appears to have recently changed to Google Book Search). What is Google Print/Google Book Search and why are author and publisher groups suing them over it?
There seem to be as many ideas about Google Print --what it is, why it is, what it wants to be as there are opinions about whether the idea is good, wrong-headed, evil, legal, promising, or civilization-ending.
What is Google Print?
Just as Google helps you find sites you might not have found any other way by indexing the full text of web pages, Google Print, like an electronic card catalog, indexes book content to help users find, and perhaps buy, books. This ability to introduce millions of users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors' books, which is precisely what copyright law is intended to foster.
The purpose of Google Print is to provide the means to search not just the information in web pages (which is what Google itself provides), but also the information in books. In order to make these books available for searching, Google has initiated two projects: Google Print Publisher Program (now called the Partner Program) and Google Print Library Project .
The Google Print Publisher Program (now called the Partner Program) allows publishers to supply their books to the program, to reap a percentage of ad revenue, and to set specifics about how their books can be viewed (the entire book is searchable, but users may only be able to look at a certain number of pages).
The Google Library Project works to "index the book collections of several major research libraries and make this content searchable through Google Print alongside books provided by publishers through our Publisher Program." Libraries involved include Unviersity of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Oxford University.
For books obtained through the Google Library Project, which are still under copyright, searchers can see only bibliographic information and a few sentences directly related to their search criteria. For books in the public domain, searchers will be able to see as much of the book as they need.
Google also offered publishers the opportunity to opt completely out of the Google Library Project. If a publisher says, 'don't scan my books,' those books won't be scanned.
The controversy around this project generally encompasses two main arguments: that people might be able to get a complete copy of a book without paying for it and that Google has no right to scan books that are still under copyright and must obtain permission for each and every book they scan. There are additional complexities to both these issues, but, in the main, these are the objections.
Without considering copyright issues yet--or, more specifically, without considering the rights of the books' creators--could Google Print be a good thing? Absolutely. Imagine being able to search every book or some reasonable cross-section thereof. You can get bibliographic information, quotes, and pointers to books you want to buy.
Tim O'Reilly, a publisher, says:
A search engine for books will be revolutionary in its benefits. Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors than copyright infringement, or even outright piracy. While publishers invest in each of their books, they depend on bestsellers to keep afloat. They typically throw their products into the market to see what sticks and cease supporting what doesn't, so an author has had just one chance to reach readers. Until now.Google promises an alternative to the obscurity imposed on most books. It makes that great corpus of less-than-bestsellers accessible to all. By pointing to a huge body of print works online, Google will offer a way to promote books that publishers have thrown away, creating an opportunity for readers to track them down and buy them. Even online sellers like Amazon offer only a small fraction of the university libraries' titles. While there are many unanswered questions about how businesses will help consumers buy the books they've found through a search engine for printed materials that is as powerful as Google's current Web search, there's great likelihood that Google Print's Library Project will create new markets for forgotten content. In one bold stroke, Google will give new value to millions of orphaned works.
Meghan Marco, an author, who unsuccessfully tried to persuade her publisher to include her book on Google Print says:
I asked my publisher, Simon and Schuster, for my book to be included in Google Print. I was told they did not do that....
Someone asked me recently, "Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?"
I replied, "Well, it seems to be working for Jesus."
Regarding the copyright issue--there are two questions that come up fairly frequently. First, why does Google need to scan the whole book? Wouldn't a bibliography--all encompassing--with really, really (no, I mean really) good--like perfect--key word capability work just as well?
No. I mean, really, there's no other answer to this question. How do keywords work for web page searches? Well, pretty much not at all. Keywords never work unless you have people entering keywords for each web page who have perfect knowledge (and a very high boredom threshold), unless you know what you’re looking for, unless all the people who enter keywords for web pages and all the people who search for web pages using keywords, view the world from pretty much the same basic angle, unless you already pretty much know how to find what you want. Keywords can help you find some things that are similar in a certain way, but they rarely help you find things you didn't know you were looking for or narrow in on a topic you're not at all familiar with when you begin. In addition, keyword searches are rife with cultural and language assumptions guaranteeing that some people will never find anything they want and that you will probably never find everything you want.
...continued in Part 2.