It is here. This is exactly the thing that I have been waiting for since I hit the web back in '92. Human knowledge, searchable. All the books in all the libraries can be culled for knowledge from this quaint little electronic device. I began hoarding media, whether it be text or picture, music or video, since I got my own network node. I was always fearing it would disapear. I always wanted it to be there, where I could get at it, regardless of the vagarities of internet backbone availability (an issue back then, and if the TLDs/root DNS or Tier Ones go wacky shack on us...), where I could search through it, looking for that tidbit that I needed to finish my program/manifesto/schoolwork (always in that order). Google seems to promise that I may not have to keep all of my old books around to have access to the contents of their pages. Google seems to be one of the few entities fighting to uphold all of the old cyberspace dreams... nay, the dreams of Ptolemy the First when he founded the Library of Alexandria. The ability to search through and view search results from pretty much every book ever published has the book publishers up in arms. I'm not even going to link to any of the crap flying around. Google seems to be using the stored scans responsibly- you can see the page where the search match appears, and a couple pages either direction (for context). I believe this is an appropriate compromise between fair use and the publisher's ability to sell books (carefully searching for terms within a book that should appear a page or two after the last page you can read is possible, but cumbersome; try searching for "Ender" whilst already on a page within the book Ender's Game). There is still need for books; I call into question the need to pay hundreds of dollars for them. I call into question the need for paper copies of books outside of libraries and those specialty shops. I call into question the publisher's place in distributing a book nowadays (why not an author and editor collaborating and selling/distributing themselves?). I call into question the motives of anyone who bitches about the great public works Google is attempting here. Naturally, I realize the danger of only one such index existing. Competitors should move into the space to insure adequate insurance against tyranny-though-control-of-search-results-and-index-contents. I have one question: Where is Google Music and Movies? Ok, two: Where is Google Games? I could think of a million reasons a ludologist would have to search through character dialogue, and/or anything else Google could think up a way to index. I suppose I am a little ahead of my time thinking about the problem of search indexing game content, though. I (we) should devote more thought to this.

Wow. Heidegger and one of my old professors too. Even some Bataille. I'll have to spend a lot more time checking this out.

Not everyone agrees with you. Namely, the people responsible for producing things so that Google can make this library in the first place -- that is, the authors -- disagree vehemently with Google's plan. See this WP editorial, "... But Not At Writer's Expense".

Quote:So my question is this: When did we in this country decide that this kind of work and investment isn't worth paying for? That is what Google, the powerful and extremely wealthy search engine, with co-founders ranking among the 20 richest people in the world, is saying by declining to license in-copyright works in its library scanning program, which has the otherwise admirable aim of making the world's books available for search by anyone with Web access.

Google says writers and publishers should be happy about this: It will increase their exposure and maybe lead to more book sales.

That's a devil's bargain.

We'd all like to have more exposure, obviously. But is that the only form of compensation Google can come up with when it makes huge profits on the ads it sells along the channels its users are compelled to navigate?

Now that the Authors Guild has objected, in the form of a lawsuit, to Google's appropriation of our books, we're getting heat for standing in the way of progress, again for thoughtlessly wanting to be paid. It's been tradition in this country to believe in property rights. When did we decide that socialism was the way to run the Internet?

( ... )

Google contends that the portions of books it will make available to searchers amount to "fair use," the provision under copyright that allows limited use of protected works without seeking permission. That makes a private company, which is profiting from the access it provides, the arbiter of a legal concept it has no right to interpret. And they're scanning the entire books, with who knows what result in the future.

There is no argument about the ultimate purpose of Google's initiative. Great value lies in a searchable, online "library at Alexandria" containing all the world's books, at least to that fraction of society that has computers, the electricity to run them and Internet connections. It would make human knowledge available on an unprecedented scale. But it must be done correctly, by acquiring the rights to the resources it wishes to exploit.

The value of Google's project notwithstanding, society has traditionally seen its greatest value in the rights of individuals, and particularly in the dignity of their work and just compensation for it.

The people who cry that information wants to be free don't address this dignity or this aspect of justice. They're more interested in ease of assembly. The alphabet ought to be free, most certainly, but the people who painstakingly arrange it into books deserve to be paid for their work. This, at the core, is what copyright is all about. It's about a just return for work and the dignity that goes with it.

It's also worth noting that for all its glory and heyday, the Library of Alexandria no longer exists. Originally a collection of independent, distributed libraries, the resulting meta-libraries were destroyed by fire or barbarians sometime between AD 50 and 500. What steps will Google take to ensure that the modern era's Library of Google isn't going to be utterly destroyed in some latter-day cataclysm?

Quote:I call into question the motives of anyone who bitches about the great public works Google is attempting here.

I call into question the critical thinking skills of anyone who's so presumptuous as to automatically assume this is a "great public work". Why is Google treating the very people responsible for creating the works in the irst place like speed bumps on the road to profitability?

To be fair, I think Google has struck an acceptable middle ground for the time being: scan only excerpted chunks of copyrighted works, rather than the whole thing. But it's asking authors to opt out of the program, rather than opting in to give Google permission in the first place.

Quote:Original post by kSquared
It's also worth noting that for all its glory and heyday, the Library of Alexandria no longer exists. Originally a collection of independent, distributed libraries, the resulting meta-libraries were destroyed by fire or barbarians sometime between AD 50 and 500. What steps will Google take to ensure that the modern era's Library of Google isn't going to be utterly destroyed in some latter-day cataclysm?

Totally irrelevant. The library of Alexandria contained many originals and books of which had very limited copies. Upon it's destruction, those works were lost. If someone blows up Google's servers then the works they scanned are still available through other channels. Long live cheap replication [smile]

I would put forward that what Google is doing is no different than a public library- it is an institution that allows me to search through books seeking knowledge. Authors and publishers cannot prevent my library from making their works available to anyone who walks in the door. They have tried; some are trying again, specifically some scientific journals that want to charge every person who looks at their work, even if a hardcopy is owned by a library. To answer kSquared's question, "Why is Google treating the very people responsible for creating the works in the irst place like speed bumps on the road to profitability?", Google is treating them that way because that is precisely what the publishers and authors are trying to be. Actually, that isn't quite fair, the deadtree industry are trying to build a great wall, not a speed bump.

It would be particularly silly of me to simply state "I fail to see what makes Google Print different than any public library." It is different. It puts anyone with an internet connection on the doorsteps of a library. That is very, very valuable. As democracy (and capitalism for that matter) is dependent on widespread availability to communication and information, anything which fosters these activities is a boon to all nations and peoples. As such, I will restate my belief that online libraries, and Google Print specifically, are Great Works.

As for a great cataclysm destroying all of the distributed data centers, I stated in the previous post that I don't believe that Google should be the only great library. I also don't believe we should throw away all of our dead tree books- librarians know how to maintain books for centuries in the proper conditions, books aren't suseptable to EMP, etc.

What use are excerpted chunks? Some use certainly, but if the quote or information is available without context or without any surrounding corollaries, contrary examples, ancillary evidence, etc., the information is worse than useless for research purposes. More importantly, useless in a discussion such as this. Frankly, I would be horrified as an author to see quotes from my works taken out of context.

kSquared:
"It's also worth noting that for all its glory and heyday, the Library of Alexandria no longer exists. Originally a collection of independent, distributed libraries, the resulting meta-libraries were destroyed by fire or barbarians..."

In the case of the barbarians, I feel that the best way to fight their modern equivilents is ensuring free flow of information. Barbarians don't survive outside of tyranny, and libraries fight tyranny by encouraging democracy.

I said that this was MORE profitable for the authors.

Quote:Original post by Sander

Quote:Original post by kSquared
It's also worth noting that for all its glory and heyday, the Library of Alexandria no longer exists. Originally a collection of independent, distributed libraries, the resulting meta-libraries were destroyed by fire or barbarians sometime between AD 50 and 500. What steps will Google take to ensure that the modern era's Library of Google isn't going to be utterly destroyed in some latter-day cataclysm?

Totally irrelevant. The library of Alexandria contained many originals and books of which had very limited copies. Upon it's destruction, those works were lost. If someone blows up Google's servers then the works they scanned are still available through other channels. Long live cheap replication [smile]

Think about how much we depend on the Internet and you'll see that in fact it's quite the same thing. How much would your online life be crippled if an attack on Google's servers was successful? Today, it'd probably be an inconvenience at best. But what about 50 years from now, if we developed a strong reliance and expectation that Google's site will be online? It helps to be a little forward-thinking here.

And if Google doesn't allow free mirroring/access to the internal database, your point about cheap replication becomes rather weak. How is one supposed to replicate an archive that cannot be accessed? And if you meant "replicating from the original work is cheap", that's definitely not true. Many of the Google works are in special collections and vaults that must be temperature-controlled to avoid oxidation of the paper.

Points both taken. I do believe that Google's digital copies of rare documents should be dispersed (at their expense) to as many different access points as is practicable.

As to an attack on Google's infrastructure in the digital realm... I think anyone who tries will have a bunch of angry digerati after them, whether they succeed or not (not to mention proper law enforcement). I also believe that if they use some of all the "dark fibre" they have been buying, than can create an infrastructure (if they haven't already) with a backbone insulated from attack between nodes in many seperate parts of the net. This would make them more difficult to knock off the net than say MSN (they relied until quite recently on a single gateway to a single datacenter).