What Annoys Europe about Google Books
August 31, 2009
Short honk: The Financial Times’s “Europe’s Digital Library Stuck in the Slow Lane” contains an interesting comment:
…what really annoys the European book industry about Google’s ambitious digital library project is that only US internet users will be allowed to browse in it.
Forces in the US are lining up to derail Google Books. Several observations:
- If the service is stopped, who in the US will pick up the ball? Libraries, the Library of Congress, outfits like Elsevier, Thomson Reuters, or Wolters Kluwer?
- What if Google stops, then shifts its focus to scanning books in more friendly climes? Looking forward, the knowledge value of the collection may put the US in the Europe pickle barrel. No access.
- What if Google builds a book data center and anchors it outside the three mile limit? With a partner in Europe, the legal eagles will have a fine time figuring out which book, what jurisdiction, what copyright, and where the digital instance “is”.
- What if students and researchers decide to publish their books using Google’s various “digital Gutenberg” systems? With “new” books flowing directly into the Google, what happens to publishers who need compliant authors to keep the pipeline filled?
I don’t have answers, but I raise the questions and provide examples in Google: The Digital Gutenberg?
Stephen Arnold, August 31, 2009
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