[Air-L] Google Books lawsuit

[Rex Troumbley]

I'll share in the mixed feelings, but add that I too am a bit worried
about commercializing access under one corporation that is only 15 years
old. What happens to these scans when Google goes out of business or goes
bankrupt?

Also, If I understand correctly, part of the reason Google has been
scanning books is to help develop their semantic search engine and to help
Google Translate, both of which require a lot of written language. The scan
quality of the books is often too low for preservation, but just good
enough for OCR. I'm an advocate of Free Culture too, but Google isn't free
(even if its costs are often hidden) and I can't help wondering whether
letting Google handle the digitization and distribution of books is really
the best we can do?

Rex Troumbley, PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of Hawaii at Manoa


On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Dan L. Burk <dburk at uci.edu> wrote:

>
> I imagine that after eight years of this, Judge Chin understands Google's
> business model(s) very well.
>
> The question "do they sell the scans" is a different question than "do
> they make money/expect to make money off the database."
>
> DLB
>
> > I'm somewhat conflicted about this. While I'm generally glad to see
> > fair use expanded, I think the judge misunderstood Google's business
> > model when citing in favor of fair use that Google "does not sell the
> > scans". They clearly wouldn't do it if they were not convinced that
> > making these books searchable is adding to their bottom-line by refining
> > user profiles.
> >
> > Felix
> >
> > On 11/14/2013 06:39 PM, Dan L. Burk wrote:
> >>
> >>> I am so, so happy about this. Big win for the Free Culture movement.
> >>
> >> I am not sure I would go that far.  You still end up a very significant
> >> body of human knowledge controlled by a not-necessarily-benign
> >> corporation
> >> with a tendency toward information monopoly.
> >>
> >> But Judge Chin's decision is the right one, and puts us on a much better
> >> road than the alternative.
> >>
> >> DLB
> >>
> >
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