Charlie Rose

agent99712  03/08/2010 11:41 PM Report

it's being made available via taxpayer dollars. they're making it sound as though 'it's free' it's not. there's a great price to pay for this and google is doing a great service in providing the advancement of technology and access to it, but they need to pay for the copyrights and do what's fair.

adill  03/08/2010 11:27 PM Report

The public, at many levels, has a rightful place at the table. Federally, Thomas, has tax payer support. I will not speak for other states but, Ohio has a tax specifically for libraries that's been in place for the last 30 years. That collection and it's inter-connection are re-energized each year. If you live in one end of state, you can get book from other. Same at colleges, and there are more in Ohio than any other state. Locally, there is a separate tax for the library. Same for the schools. Each school district has some portion of its general revenue fund pay for that schools library. This isn't just the infrastructure - it's tax payer purchase of books with weight, textures, smell, color. Then there's Online Computer Library Center, OCLC, just outside Columbus, OH & about 20 minutes from one of 2 of the top 5 public libraries in the U.S. Google is to be commended for tilting at wind mills, but it must remain ever respectfully mindful that much of what is comes from the tax payers.

Timo  03/08/2010 06:48 PM Report

Google's ability to scan print to digital is a welcomed service and they should be compensated for these technological advances. However, legislation needs to be written up to not only protect public doman material, current books under copyright, but also any future material that may only be released in a digital format.

Items under public domain digitized by Google can not be consistered their property; It must remain in the public domain. There is truely a danger for Google under different ownership or leadership in the future to take advantage of soul ownership of a library of this magnitude without any clear legislation. Just as any publisher can print a book that is within the public domain, any form of the digital book should be available to any digital release. For current copyrighted material, paying Google to scan the books into a digital format is logical for authors, but legaly, I believe should still be in conjuction with a publisher buying the rights. If we want to have digital publishers, then legislation concerning copyright and author agreements again needs to be addressed.

Robert Darnton is correct in saying this agreement between Google and authors does not include the reader. Therefore, I believe this agreement should hold little value when it comes to what we the people will say when legislation is addressed. I think the policy makers need to take the lead and progress with this for the sake of the public, the authors and digital providers.

I commend Google for taking steps forward in this industry, but I think they are taking a larger risk than they realize by not engaging with public policy development. I don't think getting ahead of the wave will hold well for them when they crash upon the importance of "our" written domain.

REMant  03/08/2010 09:41 AM Report

Harvard it seems went with the wrong company, unlike Cornell, Toronto, Library of Congress, Berkeley, UCLA, Boston Public, Chicago, Illinois, Penn State, Columbia, Brown, Penn, UNC, Duke, and a host of others, whose out-of-copyright collections can be found, at least for the moment, free at The Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/index.php, which now has 1,891,547 texts on line. As some of these were "sponsored" by Microsoft, I am uncertain whether the situation will remain so. Libraries should expect to pay someone to scan their collections, but it needn't be Google, or Microsoft. Besides that Google's scanning and cataloging is so bad as to render their collection almost unusable. Copyrighted, out-of-print books could make for a new market, similar to out-of-print CDs being burned and sold on demand on CD-ROM by several web stores now, or as downloads, but nearly anyone should be able to do that for an appropriate fee. As for selling new books, Amazon, Sony and a lot of other cos are in that business. Many new books and papers, journals and magazines are available electronically to various public library card holders, paid for by taxes. The problem is that Google seems to be trying to monopolize this whole thing - the kind of behavior Microsoft seems incapable of giving up - and to cash in on its name recognition with ppl who know no better, as well as demolish the idea of public libraries. I would advise the copyright holders to not give in, nor the librarians. And one terminal per school is genuinely ridiculous. In any case, I would advise researchers and esp students to concentrate on the primary sources, which hopefully will remain free. There's no reason to read someone mangle an author when you can now read him directly, and they always make more sense that way. Might do academia a wealth of good.

You can, BTW, always copy an excerpt from a Google book search result via screen capture software, provided you do it quickly enough.

amandahunt  03/06/2010 09:25 PM Report

I can't believe what a couple of creeps those David Drummond and James Gleick are. Robert Darnton is a positive prince and very intelligent, too. The other two are so obviously in this project for profit. And Darnton is correct. In this settlement, only the business, whose bottom line is profit, and the authors are represented, while the public is not represented at all. I hope the American government is wise and noble enough to put in the appropriate controls to protect the rights of the public. Noone would ever argue that books online shouldn't be offered to the public.

ShalomFreedman  03/06/2010 03:21 PM Report

First of all I believe Robert Darnton's concern about a future price- gauging of the public is legitimate. We already see this beginning to happen on certain popular Internet sites. 'Information Wants to Be Free" but for those who have money to pay for it. So 'The Wall Street Journal', and next year the 'NY Times', and other favorite magazines and journals will be available only to those who can afford it. This is also true of important sites which control the distribution of academic articles. So I do believe that if there is going to be some kind of 'fee' for the service it should in some way be regulated.

I agree that making these books available , the out- of- print copyrighted millions of volumes is a real public service.

But there are aspects of the agreement I personally do not understand. Will the reader have access to only twenty- percent of the book? Will the reader be able to copy the excerpts needed?

I also have questions in regard to authors and their share in this.

As to this discussion it was informative, and helpful. Another 'Charlie Rose' public service.