Google has been trying to scan 15 million books that are at the libraries at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan. They are attempting to
make these publications available on-line.
Now, controversy of copywrite infringement questions, Google has halted this 10 year project at least until November.
Google is now requesting that authors who object or wish to withold their works identify what they (the authors) wish to copywrite protect.
english.people.com.cn
Started in last December, the project means to spend ten years in scanning more than 15 million books from libraries at Harvard, Stanford and the
University of Michigan into its computers to build the world largest digitalized library online. By then people will be able to read the full text of
large amounts of valuable academic documents, and the project is lauded by New York Times "a big step in global virtual libraries".
But the project, when just started, came under charges of copyright violation. Opponents including the Association of American University Presses
believe that this program will bring a large-scale and systematic copyright violation, since Google has dropped a hint that it will scan copyright
protected books from these libraries. The Association of American Publishers once asked Google to suspend its project for six months to solve
copyright related problems.
Although Google took some measures: to provide full text of only works in public domain, that is, those on which copyrights have expired; but for
books still under copyright protection, Google will scan the full text into its computer but only provide a searchable summary online. But publishers
still hold that Google has no right to copy full text of books with copyrights and save them, in large amounts, into its own data bank.
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
On the surface, the making of these works is an admirable undertaking. It is the goal that we have all read and dream about, the internet being a
true source of all information.
Unfortunately, it does trample on the copywrite protections of those who have published any works be it written, or in song or the TV / movie
medias.
I would love to see Google finish this as well as loading up all other works to make the "dream" a reality.
Related News Links:
www.msnbc.msn.com
[edit on 19-8-2005 by asala]