[p2p-research] Google Book Search litigation is a Digital Nightmare

[Matt Boggs]

I've been following the Google Book Search litigation pretty closely. I'm a
bibliophile, so hey!  <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23518> This story in
the New York Review of Books by Robert Darnton simply must be read by all,
not just bibliophiles. On principle Google's desire to digitize all the
books in the world is a good idea. Who could not possibly appreciate having
every book ever written at their fingertips? 

Of course, there are serious problems with the way Google is going about it.
As always, privacy issues are front and center, but also monopoly power.
Both, in my opinion, alone should nix the deal. But I'm getting ahead of
myself. 

Darnton makes some very cogent points about the pending litigation and
Google's efforts to water it down. The most important critiques in the
article come from a European legal draft. I include the points I think are
key in summary: 

 

1. The settlement gives Google a virtual monopoly over orphan works, even
though it has no claim to their copyrights.

2. Its opt-out provision, which means that authors will be deemed to have
accepted the settlement unless they notify Google to the contrary, violates
the rights inherent in authorship.

4. It gives Google the power to censor its database by excluding up to 15
percent of the digitized works.

5. Its guidelines for pricing will promote Google's commercial interests,
not the good of the public, through the use of algorithms created by Google
according to Google's secret methods.

6. It favors secrecy in general, hiding audit procedures, preventing the
public from attending meetings in which Google and the Registry will discuss
library matters, and even requiring Google, the authors, and publishers to
destroy all documents relevant to their agreement on the settlement.

The power of one corporation having all the books ever written under its
corporate, profit driven power should give us all pause. And it should
awaken Congress and the president Obama form their slumber. As I said, in
principle, Google's idea is an excellent one. But in the end we are talking
about a public good and a public service. This is not a project a private
corporation should be heading up. This is properly a function of the state.
As Darnton notes: 

 

The most ambitious solution would transform Google's digital database into a
truly public library. That, of course, would require an act of Congress, one
that would make a decisive break with the American habit of determining
public issues by private lawsuit. The legislation would have to settle
ancillary problems-how to adjust copyright, deal with orphan books, and
compensate Google for its investment in digitizing-but it would have the
advantage of clearing up a messy legal landscape and of giving the American
people what they deserve: a national digital library equal to the needs of
the twenty-first century. But it is not clear how Google would react to such
a buyout.

 

And yet, the idea of a virtual library of Alexandria at our fingertips, in
our Kindle, at any given time?

One can hope.

 

Matt

 

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