Publishers Irritated by Google's Digital Library

There were two recent stories highlighting publishers' reaction to the recent announcement by Google that they would be partnering with Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford, and New York Public Library to digitize and index library collections at those institutions.

Butler, Declan. "Publishers Irritated by Google's Digital Library." Nature. 433 (7025): 446 (February 3, 2005)

Late last year, Google, based in Mountain View, California, announced a decade-long project to scan millions of volumes at the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library. The resulting archive would allow computer users worldwide to search the texts online. But some publishers complain that they weren't consulted by Google, and that scanning library collections could be illegal.

Under the scheme, people searching with Google would find library volumes relevant to their query at the top of their search results. Clicking on a title would allow them to browse images of the full text of works in the public domain. Only brief excerpts and bibliographic data would be shown for material under copyright. Participating libraries would also be given a digital copy of their collection.

Google describes the initiative as an extension of Google Print, which is based on agreements with publishers and allows the full text of books to be searched. Google Print's results provide a brief excerpt of the text, together with a link to publishers or booksellers that sell the book and to libraries that hold it.

Young, Jeffrey R. "Publishing Groups Say Google's Library-Scanning Effort May Violate Copyright Laws." Chronicle of Higher Education (February 7, 2005. Today's News).

But some publishing-industry officials say that even scanning a book and offering brief excerpts without the publishers' permission could violate copyright because scanning the book would represent a reproduction of the work, and the copying would have been done by a commercial entity rather than the library that purchased the book.

Some officials also worry that some material that Google decides is in the public domain might not be, such as books that were published in many countries with copyright laws that are often different from those in the United States.

Steve Langdon, a spokesman for Google, said in an e-mail interview that the company "respects the rights of copyright holders and the tremendous creative effort of authors, which is why we're only allowing users to view the full texts of books when they're in the public domain."

"We will also show a few pages from a book when we have an agreement to do so from the publisher," he wrote. "Books that are still in copyright will show up in our search results, but users will only be able to view very small text snippets and/or bibliographic information until we get permission from the publisher to show full page views.

Sally C.L. Morris, chief executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, said in an interview on Friday,

"They seem to be certain that what they're doing is OK under copyright law, but I can't understand how they think so," she said. "There are thousands and thousands of publishers, so I can see why they wouldn't want to" secure permission first. "But that doesn't mean there's not a legal requirement to do it."

"It's a matter of legal principle," she said, noting that many publishers were likely to agree to Google's arrangement if approached. "But they haven't been asked, and so they haven't had the opportunity to say yes or no."

Peter Givler, executive director of the Association of American University Presses, said his group also had concerns about the scanning project.

"In very general terms we are concerned," he said. "We'd just like more information from Google." He declined to comment further, referring additional queries to Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers.

However, as far back as December 20, 2004, according to the LibraryLaw blog, the Association of American Publishers declared that they weren't going to take legal action.

Posted by Tom on February 08, 2005