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Tim Lee

Retarding the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts

This is three weeks old, but I missed it when it happened, so better late than never:

Google has put its digital library project on hold until November, citing concerns from copyright holders and publishers.

The search company unveiled Google Print in October 2004 as a way for publishers to make their books accessible over the Internet. The company also quickly introduced a comparable program to allow libraries to scan in their collections, index them, and make them web-accessible as well.

The rest of the article has a bunch of details on the concessions Google is making to the publishers to keep them happy. Maybe I’m missing something, but it looks to me like Google is bending over backwards to accomodate the publishers, and the publishers are stiff-arming them. As I argued back in July, I think Google has a perfectly plausible case that Google Print is a fair use under copyright law, and that they have every right to do what they’re doing without consulting the publishers and without giving them a cut of the ad revenue. Yet even after Google has offered to share the revenues with the publishers and easily opt out of the program, the publishers have refused to budge.

I think it’s hard to overstate how big a deal this is. We’re all used to using search engines to search content on the web. It would be amazing if the same functionality were to exist with every book in the library. Until now, the barrier has been technology. But now, when such a search engine is becoming technologically feasible, it looks like it’s going to be thwarted by the lawyers.

Why shouldn’t Goole just negotiate with the publishers and get their permission? If you want to see how that will end up, just look at Nexis and Factiva. Nexis is an extremely useful and powerful search engine, but it’s expensive, it’s proprietary, and it’s not especially user-friendly. And if you want to search for articles that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, you can’t do that, because the Dow Jones company decided they wanted to create their own proprietary search service. It’s a royal pain in the ass, and it will probably never change, because anyone who tried to create a full-text search of Wall Street Journal content– even if they made you buy the actual articles from the WSJ web page– would get sued out of existence.

We’re at a crossroads. If Google (or someone else) stands up to the publishing industry and wins in court, we’ll end up with a future in which book searches are like web searches. If Google caves, and no one else dares get into a lawsuit with the publishers, then book searching is going to look like Nexis and Factiva– proprietary, expensive, and fractured among different mutually exclusive services.

The saddest part, I think, is that hardly anyone is even paying attention. If Google Print gets strangled by the publishing industry, 99% of consumers will never even realize what they’ve lost.

September 8, 2005 | Comments |

  • "But now, when such a search engine is becoming technologically feasible, it looks like it's going to be thwarted by the lawyers."

    If Google wins in court, will you say that the project was "saved by lawyers"?
  • Tim
    In a manner of speaking. However, it would have been better for everyone involved if the lawyers hadn't gotten involved in the first place.
  • Brett Bellmore
    I guess I can see where they're coming from: The only thing saving the dead tree publishing industry is valuable information that somebody has to buy a pound of wood pulp to obtain. Think of it as a copy protection mechanism.

    Digitize all those books, and one clever hacker could turn what [i]had been[/i] a few million dollars in inventory into worthless cardboard.

    Still, given the actual text of the Constitution with respect to copyright, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;", it's certainly arguable that you've passed beyond constitutional bounds as soon as copyright becomes a obstacle to progress. Of course, it's arguable that they passed that point when they started extending existing copyrights, making the "limited time" clause toothless.
  • This is the tip of the iceberg, in terms of IP law strangling innovation. I would strongly suggest the book Steal this Idea by Michael Perelman
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