12th Mar 2007
Perspective on a current issue
Seems there’s uproar on account of the AAP suing Google for scanning books from libraries. Publishers insist on an opt-in approach, while Google insists that scanning and indexing is fair use, and that publishers can opt out.
Those who are for Google’s approach comment that due to costs most of the work created during the 20th century is not undergoing digitization and that Google’s project will help reduce the amount of creative work that is lost (considering whatever is not on the net is ignored by a majority of the population in this day and age).
Those who are against say that Google is consistently violating copyright and thus undermining incentives to create.
Tim O’reilly has a great post on the matter, where he defends Google and crushes the opposition with some very good arguments. As O’reilly notes, there are 32,000,000 books out of print, existing only in libraries. Digitizing those books and making them available on the web can only create demand (which will put money into the hands of publishers and authors – assuming the authors are not dead).
Trying to stop this project is just another stupid (yes, plain stupid) move by blind bureaucrats that are always 5 steps behind the obvious evolution of society. It truly pisses me off.
However, copyright and economics are not the real issue here. Seeing as every single creation today is originally created in digital form this is a problem that will cancel itself out very quickly. In the coming centuries billions upon billions of creations will come to life. All of them will be catalogued and indexed in digital form (or whatever future technology is used by then). The 20th century’s legacy will be but a fraction of that work.
We should be talking about the responsibility to preserve our creations for future generations.
Wouldn’t it be great if all book were online? I’m thinking on a research point of view – even if we stick to the traditional format of a book, you could link from the bibliography directly to the relevant chapter. If you ever spent some time in a library, doing serious history research you can appriciate the possibilities.
The problem is adapting the system in a way that would preserve some kind of incentive for the content providers (authors, translators, editors) to keep on creating. Any ideas?
All contect will be available online henceforth. It’s just a matter of time.
Lately I’ve started reading books on my iPaq before going to sleep – that way I can download anythingI want to read without having to go to a library.
The only question is whether access to the scanned material will be charged or free. That’s really up to the authors; if they insist ignoring technology they’ll suffer the same fate as the music industry.
I don’t think we know the fate of the music industry yet. It is an industry – more than ever before – so I’m not sure in what sense it suffers. But mp3 “piracy” and the fight of the record companies against it is undecided yet. I don’t know what will happen if the big guys fall. Maybe it will all be in perspective again – no more hyper rich rappers overly promoted with multi-million-dollar clip productions? Who knows.
In “fate”, I mean the industry suffered losses due to diminishing CD sales.
The music giant will not fall in a day nor fall at all, in my opinion, but will definitely need to adapt to the new reality (it has started already).
Evidence implies that this adaptation will be done screaming and kicking all the way, though.
Maybe that’s the only way it *can* happen.
So, will the publication industry adapt screaming and kicking all the way, or will they adopt technology sooner, and perhaps make a few more bucks?