Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Who needs the library, When you've got Google!
"Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google's ambitious program to scan millions of books and make their text fully searchable on the internet...The outcome could determine how easy it will be for people with internet access to benefit from knowledge that's now mostly locked up -- in books sitting on dusty library shelves, many of them out of print. "
Sanfilippo's overall idea is for google to make the thousands of books that sit on shelves available on google search. In other words, people will be able to sit at their computer and read or print entire books. I think this idea is great. Personally, i hate libraries because i hate searching for books through dozens and dozens of shelves sometimes to find that they don't even carry the book you are looking for anymore. Ok, sure there are librarians and with more modern technology there are the people that can look up what books are in stock or not but with google search its like you have that power from your home. Of course there is always a negative aspect; this idea that Sanfilippo has will definately make peole so much more "lazier" than they already are. And more importantly, eventually people will just stop going to libraries or even bookstores to purchase books; thats two businesses that will suffer greatly.
"To endorse Google's library initiative is to say "it's OK to break into my house because you're going to clean my kitchen," said Sally Morris, chief executive of the U.K.-based Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. "Just because you do something that's not harmful or (is) beneficial doesn't make it legal." "
"I don't see how making a few snippets of a work available to a user could have any negative impact on the market," said Band, who has advised library groups and internet companies on copyright issues."
Because publishers are having such a hard time accepting this idea, they believe google will need to obtain copyright laws and go through the publishing companies to get the works that they want scanned. But the bigger problem is that many of those works do not exist any more or are out of print. So now google is trying to work with libraries to get a more sufficient amout of works scanned.
"From the point of view of the publishers, you can't blame them for playing their role, which is to maximize sales," he said. "But if fair use wasn't found, (Google) would never be able to do the mass importation of books required to make a database that is socially useful."
Sanfilippo's overall idea is for google to make the thousands of books that sit on shelves available on google search. In other words, people will be able to sit at their computer and read or print entire books. I think this idea is great. Personally, i hate libraries because i hate searching for books through dozens and dozens of shelves sometimes to find that they don't even carry the book you are looking for anymore. Ok, sure there are librarians and with more modern technology there are the people that can look up what books are in stock or not but with google search its like you have that power from your home. Of course there is always a negative aspect; this idea that Sanfilippo has will definately make peole so much more "lazier" than they already are. And more importantly, eventually people will just stop going to libraries or even bookstores to purchase books; thats two businesses that will suffer greatly.
"To endorse Google's library initiative is to say "it's OK to break into my house because you're going to clean my kitchen," said Sally Morris, chief executive of the U.K.-based Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. "Just because you do something that's not harmful or (is) beneficial doesn't make it legal." "
"I don't see how making a few snippets of a work available to a user could have any negative impact on the market," said Band, who has advised library groups and internet companies on copyright issues."
Because publishers are having such a hard time accepting this idea, they believe google will need to obtain copyright laws and go through the publishing companies to get the works that they want scanned. But the bigger problem is that many of those works do not exist any more or are out of print. So now google is trying to work with libraries to get a more sufficient amout of works scanned.
"From the point of view of the publishers, you can't blame them for playing their role, which is to maximize sales," he said. "But if fair use wasn't found, (Google) would never be able to do the mass importation of books required to make a database that is socially useful."
