NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] "Open Book Alliance" to fight Google Books settlement
"Open Book Alliance" to fight Google Books settlement http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/21/technology/google_books/index.htm - - - My view is that the settlement is imperfect, but on balance, I would like to see it either approved as is, or approved without changes of the sort that would cause the settlement to implode. Does the settlement give Google a favored status in this space? Yes. But the job of digitizing the books on this scale is gigantic and expensive. It has to be paid for somehow. Would I ideally like to see some mechanism whereby books could be scanned *once* and then more openly shared among various interested entities? Theoretically at least, yes. But doing this in a fair way in practice, given the costs involved, seems decidedly non-trivial. My biggest concern is that without the settlement in its current form or something quite close to the current structure, we will again be relegating orphan works to limbo status where only tiny numbers of people have access to them. This would be a tragedy, in my opinion. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator