The Oxford University Press on the Google Book Settlement
By Paul Biba
In a thoughtful article, Tim Barton, president of the OUP makes the case for the Settlement:
At a focus group in Oxford University Press’s offices in New York last month, we heard that in a recent essay assignment for a Columbia University classics class, 70 percent of the undergraduates had cited a book published in 1900, even though it had not been on any reading list and had long been overlooked in the world of classics scholarship. Why so many of the students had suddenly discovered a 109-year-old work and dragged it out of obscurity in preference to the excellent modern works on their reading lists is simple: The full text of the 1900 work is online, available on Google Book Search; the modern works are not. …
So we at Oxford University Press support the settlement, even as we recognize its imperfections and want it made better. As Voltaire said, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” the perfect is the enemy of the good. Let us not waste an opportunity to create so much good. Let us work together to solve the imperfections of the settlement. Let us work together to give students, scholars, and readers access to the written wisdom of previous generations. Let us keep those minds alive.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 am
Well, sure. But a book from 1900 is in the public domain, no question. It’s great that Google is giving free access to these things, and if they want to resell them in hard copy or e-format, that’s their prerogative. My objection as an author is to Google claiming exclusive rights to sell scans of orphan works. Why should they have exclusive rights to these books? Will another person be able to take the same book off another library’s shelf, scan it, and sell it? And if not, why shouldn’t they have that right if Google has it? That’s what wasn’t clear and what was disturbing–also that, once a book goes out of print, the author seems to lose a portion of control over that scan.
I never had an objection to Google offering partial access to a scan of my book (which is not out of print, yet) with a link to purchase it. I have purchased such books after having partial access to them on Google Books, and it’s a great “give them a taste” bit of advertising. It’s a shame that I had to pick all or nothing–to not allow any access, or allow access to all of it, with Google making the profit.
They need to either get the copyright law changed in regard to orphan works or deal with the horrible system we have. The proposed “solution” in the settlement is no solution at all. In this Google and Disney are at loggerheads and the fallout will be interesting to observe.