Tuesday, November 1, 2005
As Google resumes scanning books for the Google Print project, publishers are protesting what they consider copyright infringement.
The company secured agreements with Harvard, the University of Michigan and three other public and university libraries to scan their entire collections. Google officials describe their goal as creating an online card catalog. They bill the Print effort as a way for publishers to promote their books and bring out-of-print volumes to a wider audience. The company says it will only completely scan books that are already in the public domain.
But the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild have filed lawsuits against Google, claiming the search company is going beyond what's allowed by copyright laws.
Jed Lyons, president of Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, an independent academic publisher, maintains Google needs permission from each and every author of the scanned books. He is prohibiting his company's books from being digitized to protest Google's agreements with the libraries.
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Comments: 1
I have created a quick and dirty Web site called http://OurRightToParticipation.pbwiki.com to begin detailing what elements of such a right we should define for ourselves before a business entity or a corporate client defines it for us.
I think we all need to be involved in this discussion.