[Leica] Re: Google book scanning

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Nov 18, 2008, at 7:44 PM, Tina wrote:

> "One thorny issue has already reached the courts.
> <http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588-5907506.html>Google faces lawsuits
> from publishers and authors that claim it is violating their
> copyrights and overstepping the boundaries of fair use laws.


Here is an extract from ZDNet.

"But not every copyright expert is so sure Google is on thin ice.  
Truth is, there's no consensus in the legal community on this one-of- 
a-kind case. The fight comes down to a simple question: Is the search  
king setting itself up to be a copyright violator of epic  
proportions, or is it a champion of learning trying to make even the  
most obscure books readily accessible in a Web search?"

Apart from the fact that my quote may itself be a copyright  
violation, the problem in the academic community is a very real one.  
As a professor teaching doctoral level courses at a very large  
university a couple of decades ago, I found it very difficult to get  
publishers to consider printing annotated collections of obscure  
articles where the expected worldwide total sales would be less than  
1000 copies. The entire national enrollment of graduate students in  
some very advanced specialties is often less than 100 and class sizes  
of 5 to 8 were common. What to do?

Fortunately our publication department had recently purchased a high  
speed Xerox printer and we could run off "print on demand" editions  
of 200 page texts on short notice. After we had received the  
permission of the original copyright holder, of course. Today custom  
publishers like Blurb or Lulu could do the same job, and in full  
color too. But every scholar would have welcomed the opportunity to  
download those obscure and often impossible to obtain documents from  
the internet. Think of the trees that could have been saved.

When teaching in India in the 1980s, I was shocked to find that even  
the largest university libraries had very few of the standard texts  
that were widely available in the U.S and Europe. The cost of a  
single textbook, at U.S. bookstore prices would have exceeded the  
monthly income of an average family. As a professor in the U.S. I was  
overwhelmed by the free copies of textbooks that would arrive in the  
mail every day in the hope that they would be adopted as required  
reading. For several years, through the courtesy of Air India, we  
provided an airlift of textbook publisher's samples and overruns to  
local Indian college libraries. India seems to be doing well  
economically these days but the cost of books is still well out of  
reach of many Third World countries. And in other countries,  
publication and sale of some books is absolutely prohibited. Try to  
buy a Bible in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

So I, for one, applaud Google's efforts.

Larry Z