The Public Option

Economics columnist John Kay explored the future of a digital library in today’s Financial Times comment section.  His ultimate finding…a comprehensive digital library is too important to be entrusted to a closed legal settlement.

Kay writes:

The court case is an unsatisfactory way of deciding an important issue. The principal potential beneficiaries from the rapid extension of digital access – the public and authors struggling to get work published – are not parties to the case. The dispute, and the forum of resolution, is American, but the practical effects will be felt worldwide.

So how can we accomplish the feat without creating a Google monopoly?  Kay, like many others, proposes an open process where non-profit public sector organizations – not advertising companies – hold the keys and protect copyright holders’ valuable works.

What is needed is a public option. The great libraries of the past – from Oxford’s Bodleian Library to Andrew Carnegie’s small town facilities – have made incalculable contributions to scholarship and economic progress. These outcomes were the result of philanthropic and state action, which facilitated private enterprise. Comprehensive digitisation of printed media will cost a few hundred million dollars – large enough to constitute a commercial entry barrier, so the fear of Google is justified – but tiny relative to existing global library budgets, far less the potential economic benefits of wider reading and better scholarship. The debate should move to a larger, more international forum.

The Open Book Alliance couldn’t agree more.  International public opinion is clearly at odds with handing a single company the keys to a digital library.  As we move beyond the exclusive book settlement, we expect John Kay’s call for an independent, non-profit public library to be the ultimate resolution.