Chris O’Brien of the San Jose Mercury News writes:
“When I heard Google had settled its feud with book publishers, I knew exactly whom I wanted to call first: Brewster Kahle, the digital librarian who is the founder of the Internet Archive.
I first talked to Kahle back in 2004, around the time Google launched its Book Search. The program riled publishers, who felt it amounted to a massive copyright violation, triggering the class-action suit. Kahle, who was also critical of the plan, helped put together the Open Content Alliance, a competing venture of libraries and tech companies such as Yahoo that sought to scan millions of books and make them available for free.
Google’s plan was to build a new kind of bookstore. Kahle and the alliance want to build a new kind of library. By coincidence, the 135 members of the Open Content Alliance were gathered in San Francisco on Tuesday for a two-day conference when news of the Google settlement came down. I wondered whether the news had changed Kahle’s view of Google’s program.”
Continued here.
Google makes the rules.
from story:
“When Google started out, they pointed people to other people’s content,” Kahle said. “Now they’re breaking the model of the Web. They’re like the bad old days of AOL, trying to build a walled garden of content that you have to pay to see.”
right. I remember how I could always find a cached copy on Google of a news story that a paper like the Boston Globe had pulled from its site and made subscription only. Google was only keeping the copy from last week when the story was free, so they weren’t violating any rules (in their eyes). but no librarians cared. I don’t remember anyone complaining about access to free stuff ten years ago, all they cared was that it was free. and google got bigger and more powerful. now they can do whatever they want and no one will be able to stop them. all that free content belongs to them because everyone gave it away.