Google and the Future of Books

January 28, 2009 at 12:01 am PT

How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google (GOOG) and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright. For the last four years, Google has been digitizing millions of books, including many covered by copyright, from the collections of major research libraries, and making the texts searchable online. The authors and publishers objected that digitizing constituted a violation of their copyrights. After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?

Read the rest of this post

Tagged with: books, Google, library, Robert Darnton

comments so far. Add yours.

  • Steve Sheehy

    Pool your resources guys , Google infringe copyright e/where , pay people off , take over content and jam e/one , has e/one gone mad , there is that many services to work with to leverage you lazy mothers , all cos stand together like a union and buyback , standover the BIG G , and dictate back to them like they do to e/one else , a union of activists , probably acting against contracts and copyright , can beat the biggest copyright infringing , law – breaking , profit – destroying co and give them a taste of what e/one else is copping . Who infringed law first should be the pre-determinent in which is the wining law-suit . They have some good stuff too , but they don’t give a rip about a/thing , just there own vision and dominance . The M/soft of the next-gen . Have your say please

  • http://blog.macb.net Mac Beach

    I ran the above through Google translate and it couldn’t make any sense of it.

    Anyway, I’m all for more stuff being online. If you’ve ever used a first class university library the ordinary community ones just won’t do. Good enough for high school kids to do their homework, but not much beyond that.

    We need to get this stuff online and searchable, and Google is providing the copyright holders incentive to do what they aught to be doing in the first place, namely getting their content out there in digital form where MORE people can get at and potentially PAY for it.

    Between Google and Kindle we might soon end the chains that bind us to the owners of printing presses

About Voices

This is a section of the AllThingsD Web site featuring posts that have been curated from around the Web: pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Five posts are included here each weekday, but only the headline and the first two sentences. We link to the original site for the rest. The section is explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that content comes “from other Web sites.”

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions. Voices is edited by Beth Callaghan.

Dive Into Media

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

Apple to Announce iPad 3 First Week in March

John Paczkowski in Mobile

Can’t Buy Me Love … But You Can Buy Me Gadgets

Lauren Goode in Commerce

LinkedIn Is Acquiring Contacts Start-Up Rapportive

Liz Gannes in Social

View all today’s news »