Microsoft book searches (NYT)

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October 26, 2005
Microsoft to Offer Online Book-Content Searches
By KATIE HAFNER

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 25 - Microsoft announced Tuesday that it planned to
join the online book-search movement with a new service called MSN Book
Search.

And in a nod to the growing influence of a recently formed group called
the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft announced its plans to join it. The
group is working to digitize the contents of millions of books and put
them on the Internet, with full text accessible to anyone, while
respecting the rights of copyright holders.

Microsoft is making the largest contribution to the alliance to date - $5
million - which is enough to scan about 150,000 books.

In aligning with the Open Content Alliance, MSN is joining forces with its
archrival Yahoo, which announced its support of the project this month.

Several universities, including the University of California, Columbia
University and Rice University, as well as the Internet Archive and the
National Archives of Britain, have joined the alliance.

MSN Book Search will go online in test form early next year. Although the
content of out-of-copyright books will be accessible at no charge from MSN
Book Search, Microsoft is talking with publishers about how it might
charge for books under copyright - perhaps per page, perhaps per chapter.

"We're thinking through a whole host of business models for the 
in-copyright stuff," said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of search 
content acquisition at MSN.

Google's service, called Google Print, has come under a great deal of 
criticism since it was announced nearly a year ago.

Last month, a group of authors sued Google, asserting that Google Print is 
engaged in copyright infringement. While only text fragments are displayed 
in the course of a search, a book must be digitized in its entirety to 
make it searchable, the authors said.

Last week, five large publishing companies - McGraw-Hill, Pearson 
Education, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons - filed a 
similar lawsuit.

Instead of the "opt-out" approach taken by the Google Print Library 
Project, which gives copyright holders until Nov. 1 to contact Google if 
they do not want their work scanned, MSN and other Open Content Alliance 
members plan to ask copyright holders for permission before digitizing a 
work.

"We're pretty strongly 'opt-in,' " Ms. Tiedt said. "We're very aligned 
with protecting copyright and intellectual property."

"We're rolling now, and very few institutions will say no," said Rick 
Prelinger, administrator of the Open Content Alliance.

The alliance is the brainchild of Brewster Kahle, the founder of the 
Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that is 
building a vast digital library.

Mr. Kahle has said repeatedly that one of his greatest hopes is to have
Google join the project. Mr. Kahle said Tuesday that talks with Google
seemed to be progressing toward an agreement. Nathan Tyler, a Google
spokesman, confirmed Tuesday that Google was speaking with Mr. Kahle about
joining the alliance, but there was nothing yet to announce.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times

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