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The Google blog has responded
to widespread questioning of its new policy
regarding the Google Print Library Project. In the new scheme, book publishers who wish their books to be excluded from
Google’s scanning sweep through libraries must opt out of the program before November. Google has ceased work on
digitizing the books until then. American copyright law, as has been widely noted, works in the reverse of Google’s
view: would-be copiers or licensers of published content must obtain permission to acquire that content. American
copyright is not an opt-out scheme for publishers, as Google has set up its program. Interestingly, Google justifies
its method like this, as quoted from the Google blog:
”*Update: People have been asking us how we came to this new policy for the Google Print Library Project. We
consulted with a variety of constituencies and ultimately decided that this new approach would best balance the rights
and needs of users and publishers while remaining consistent with our web search policy. Google automatically indexes
content across the web. Most web publishers find this service convenient and useful, but we gladly offer those who
prefer that we not index their site a way of telling us not to do so via a robots.txt file. Similarly, the Library
Project aims to make it convenient and useful for publishers to get their books into Google Print, but those publishers
who don’t want to take advantage of this service can now simply tell us which books they’d like us to
exclude.”
This fascinating interpretation of book-publishing sensibility, not to mention the reversal of copyright mechanics, is
(in my opinion) a result of technology culture clash. Google is explicitly equating book publishers with Website
owners, and books with sites. Google’s rationale is that content needs traffic, whether that content be books or sites,
and Google can drive that content if it is indexed. Therefore, it is in every publisher’s best interest to
allow indexing of content. Google is so convinced of this logic (arrogantly convinced, many would say) that it is
willing to reverse the engine of copyright in a simple assertion that Google knows what is best for content and its
publishers.
I think Google is right. But again, as I have pointed out so often recently, the company is expressing cluelessness
about public relations, and, in this case, about different corporate mindsets. Eyeballs and visitor traffic do not
represent currency in the book-publishing world as they do online. Book publishers do not buy this argument, or even
understand it in many cases. Google is leapfrogging ahead to a new paradigm of information access, and has no idea the
degree of explanation, evolution, and nurturing that is required before old media can join the program. Simply
dictating that publishers follow an opt-out program that counters American law can only be viewed, from the unwilling
publisher’s viewpoint, as evil.
And, by the way, Google’s reversal of copyright holds true for the Web, too. Google’s Web cache is arguably illegal,
but most Web publishers are happy to be in the index, both cached and live. Use of the robots.com file to rebuff
spiders and prevent indexing is widely accepted, but that doesn’t make it any more astounding for the basic fact that
search engines force Web publishers into an opt-out copyright program, unchallenged. Based on this tremendous (even
outrageous) success, Google believes it can sway book publishers the same way. I believe Google is in for a long uphill
battle.
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