Jumping on the Google Train
So, I'm sure everyone out there has heard the news of the latest Google Print lawsuit. Now authors are getting in on the litigation action. Which is interesting and, make no mistake, Google is enjoying hella publicity from all this - they release the plans and reap the PR rewards, even before page hits scanner. “We regret that this group has chosen litigation to try to stop a program that will make books and the information within them more discoverable to the world…” Hello, public manipulation and great PR. Google's the good guy here - and copyright holders are the bad guys, denying the public their due. (from a Google statement and quoted in the linked NYTimes article above)
But what really interests me about it is this sentence from a Google statement: “Google Print directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the program. And, if they choose, authors and publishers can exclude books from the program if they don't want their material included. Copyrighted books are indexed to create an electronic card catalog and only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more.” Ummm, does Google know that their already is an electonic card catalog of the world's book called OCLC/first search? It's already mostly available to the public, or it could be with far less effort than scanning complete books? C'mon, you're a big scary company, surely you can come up with a better arguement than that.
