Google defends “orphan books” settlement
A Google Books executive has defended in no uncertain terms the agreement that it won regarding the scanning of so-called “orphan” books, those that are still under copyright, but out of print.
The world of technology continues to clash with the centuries-old concept of copyright, which was born in an age well before computers muddied the waters around intellectual property ownership. The “orphan books” agreement, made last year, gives Google the right to scan books that have copyright protection but are out of print even if the rights holder of the work can’t be located to grant permission. However, more and more parties are challenging the rights of Google and the future of the agreement is in doubt.
Speaking at the Book History Museum in Mountain View, Google’s chief Book Search engineer Dan Clancy was not at all shy about his feelings on the matter, according to a CNET story. In essence, he said that if the organizations attacking Google’s book search settlement with publishers spent as much time lobbying Congress for better laws concerning those issues, perhaps the controversy over the agreement would go away.
The basic issue comes down to exclusivity. Under the settlement reached, Google would have a monopoly on the scanning and electronic storage of these millions of orphan books. The deal also gives them the right to sell electronic copies of the books, and therefore make a profit from them. Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system, says that the settlement, “takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google. Google will be a monopoly.”
Google sees it more as an act of preservation of the books in electronic form, although it acknowledges that there could be some return from sales. Given that it has already scanned over 7 million books without gaining any revenue, it would likely be a long time before the word “profit” could be properly used. And the agreement specifies that parties other than Google could scan such book, but they would not be allowed to exercise the same privileges Google enjoys with respect to orphan works.
And once the books are in electronic form, of course, they are easier to steal and distribute, or pirate and sell. That is one obvious problem, tantamount to letting the genie out of the bottle. But the core issue remains: who does the knowledge in all these books really belong to?
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