Google to Put Copyright Laws to the Test
Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google Inc.'s
ambitious program to scan millions of books and make their text fully
searchable on the Internet.
On the one hand, Sanfilippo credits the program for boosting sales of
obscure titles at Penn State University Press, where he works. On the other,
he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained
directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues.
With Google's book-scanning program set to resume in earnest this fall,
copyright laws that long preceded the Internet look to be headed for a
digital-age test.
The outcome could determine how easy it will be for people with Internet
access to benefit from knowledge that's now mostly locked up — in books
sitting on dusty library shelves, many of them out of print."More and more people are expecting access, and they are making do with what
they can get easy access to," said Brewster Kahle, co-founder of the
Internet Archive, which runs smaller book-scanning projects, mostly for
out-of-copyright works. "Let's make it so that they find great works rather
than whatever just happens to be on the Net."
To prevent the wholesale file-sharing that is plaguing the entertainment
industry, Google has set some limits in its library project: Users won't be
able to easily print materials or read more than small portions of copyright
works online.
Google also says it will send readers hungry for more directly to
booksellers and libraries.
But many publishers' remain wary.
To endorse Google's library initiative is to say "it's OK to break into my
house because you're going to clean my kitchen," said Sally Morris, chief
executive of the U.K.-based Association of Learned and Professional Society
Publishers. "Just because you do something that's not harmful or (is)
beneficial doesn't make it legal."
Morris and other publishers believe Google must get their permission first,
as it has under the Print Publisher Program it launched in October 2004, two
months before announcing the library initiative.
Under the publishers' program, Google has deals with most major U.S. and
U.K. publishers. It scans titles they submit, displays digital images of
selected pages triggered by search queries and gives publishers a cut of
revenues from accompanying ad displays.
But publishers aren't submitting all their titles under that program, and
many of the titles Google wants to scan are out of print and belong to no
publisher at all.
Jim Gerber, Google's director of content partnerships, says the company
would get no more than 15 percent of all books ever published if it relied
solely on publisher submissions.
That's why it has turned to libraries.
Under the Print Library Project, Google is scanning millions of copyright
books from libraries at Harvard, Michigan and Stanford along with
out-of-copyright materials there and at two other libraries.
Google has unilaterally set this rule: Publishers can tell it which books
not to scan at all, similar to how Web site owners can request to be left
out of search engine indexes. In August, the company halted the scanning of
copyright books until Nov. 1, saying it wanted to give publishers time to
compile their lists.
Richard Hull, executive director of the Text and Academic Authors
Association, called Google's approach backwards. Publishers shouldn't have
to bear the burden of record-keeping, agreed Sanfilippo, the Penn State
press's marketing and sales director.
"We're not aware of everything we've published," Sanfilippo said. "Back in
the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were no electronic files for those books."
Google, which wouldn't say how many books it has scanned so far, says it
believes its initiative is protected under the "fair use" provisions of
copyright law.
Gerber argues that the initiative will "stimulate more people to contribute
to the arts and the sciences by making these books more findable."
Washington lawyer Jonathan Band says Google's case is strong given the
limits on display — a few sentences at a time for works scanned from
libraries, with technology making it difficult to recreate even a single
page.
"I don't see how making a few snippets of a work available to a user could
have any negative impact on the market," said Band, who has advised library
groups and Internet companies on copyright issues.
Under Google's strictures, readers can see just five pages at a time of
publisher-submitted titles — and no more than 20 percent of an entire book
through multiple searches. For books in the public domain, they can read the
entire book online.
Not all publishers are opposed.
"For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy," said
Tim O'Reilly, chief executive of O'Reilly Media and an adviser to Google's
project. "Google is offering publishers an amazing opportunity for people to
discover their content."
James Hilton, associate provost and interim librarian at the University of
Michigan, said his school is contributing 7 million volumes over six years
because one day, materials that aren't searchable online simply won't get
read.
"That doesn't mean it's going to be read online, but it's not going to be
found if it's not online," he said.
Hal Hallstein, a 2003 Colby College graduate, said Google's project would
have been useful for his studies in Buddhism. He typed the word "shunyata" —
Sanskrit for emptiness — and found several books he didn't know existed.
"The card catalog in my experience is rather limited in terms of the amount
it really describes," he said.
Nonetheless, as e-media coordinator at Wisdom Publications, he believes each
publisher should be able to decide whether to join, as his company has.
Much of the objections appear to stem from fears of setting a precedent that
could do future harm to publishing.
"If Google is seen as being permitted to do this without any response, then
probably others will do it," said Allan Adler, a vice president at the
Association of American Publishers. "You would have a proliferation of
databases of complete copies of these copyrighted works."
Publishers won't rule out a lawsuit against Google.
The technology juggernaut, whose name is synonymous with online search,
isn't just shaking up book publishing.
Google has a separate project to archive television programs but has so far
received limited permissions. The company also faces lawsuits over
facilitating access to news resources and porn images online.
Jonathan Zittrain, an Internet legal scholar affiliated with Oxford and
Harvard universities, says the book-scanning dispute comes down balancing
commercial and social benefits.
"From the point of view of the publishers, you can't blame them for playing
their role, which is to maximize sales," he said. "But if fair use wasn't
found, (Google) would never be able to do the mass importation of books
required to make a database that is socially useful."
