The Cookie Before Dinner
Last Friday, I was fortunate to participate in an event on the Google Book settlement and the Future of Information Access. Hosted by the UC Berkeley School of Information, the event brought together a couple hundred academic, legal, and industry minds to discuss the promise and the pitfalls of the controversial settlement proposal between Google, the Authors’ Guild, and the Association of American Publishers.
My takeaway from the panels and hallway conversations is that the academic and scholarly community – among the parties who would be most affected by this settlement – are fairly critical of the settlement proposal in its current form.
Four issues in particular kept cropping up during the panels – the utility of the service that Google says it will deliver; the diminished competition that will occur as a result of the de facto exclusivity offered by the settlement; significant privacy issues that are yet unanswered by Google; and the quality of the books and their descriptive metadata that Google intends to offer.
On the last point, Geoff Nunberg from the School of Information gave what may have been the most interesting and entertaining presentation of the day, highlighting a sampling of the errors in Google’s book scanning efforts to date. In his words, “GBS (Google Book Settlement) metadata are awful.”
Media coverage of the event highlighted the point that many in the academic community seem to agree on – while the digitization of books can offer tremendous benefits to all, there are better, fairer ways to go about making that future a reality. We don’t have to grab the cookie that’s offered to us before dinner.
- On Aug 31, 2009
- Posted by Peter.
- It is filed under: Uncategorized
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The mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students. The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by...
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Writers and publishers (including self-publishers) of “books” including out-of-print-books (and actually including many magazines, journals, chapbooks, ephemera, etc.), have until 4 September 2009 to decide what to do about a proposed settlement of m…
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I am relatively new to this debate.
My main concern has to do with competition and privacy concerns.
I believe that competition — and open access — can make for much more dynamic and ultimately useful products.
With respect to privacy, I like the fact that I can check out a book from the library and return it with none-the-wiser. Google routinely searches my emails and web searches and begins pestering me with ads. That truly irks me. It would be far worse if one of the few respites from the ad-addled life — books — becomes just another extension of the advertising machine.
If Google wants to scan all those books, go ahead. But don’t try to sell me something and don’t tell others what I’m reading. Amazon does that enough…
You are right. Google scanning is imperfect, and the settlement is imperfect. I have a great idea for you, so that you don’t have to use either one: Go scan all the books yourself and start your own Book Search! There isn’t any exclusivity in the settlement.
All of this Google bashing makes me sick. Google is trying to OPEN up the world’s content, including books. How can you call yourselves the “OPEN book alliance” if you’d rather keep Google’s (free!) book search SHUT?
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