Google Library - Purveyors or Pirates
The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, the Association of American University Presses and the Association of American Publishers in denouncing Google's copying of books without first seeking permission from the copyright holder.
Google is saying it is OK to copy the books because it isn't publishing them. It does use fragments of the texts in search results though. They also claim it is for the benefit of all. There self appointed mission to digitse the world! Well that may be, but lets see if I can ever access all that data for free. I wonder if they will start selling ebooks?
Seriously, can you imagine them doing it for the fun of it? Of course they will leverage it into dollars somewhere along the line. Now that is fine, they can make their money, I just want to see them do it the right way.
I really like the idea of being able to read or find anything that humans have created, in books, online, at home, wherever. Does this outweigh the rather cavalier aprroach that Google is taking? They have a dodgy opt-out scheme. They are saying that publishers should tell them what books they don't want copied. SO if I am unaware that google is doing this, I lose all rights to my work! If they truly believe that what they are doing is legal, why would they need this opt-out scheme? Wouldn't all works be legitimate targets under fair use??
I tend to agree with Lauren Weistein's opinion
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200508/msg00158.html
What do you think?