Google an d Libraries -- the obvious question

[adam hodgkin <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

Isn't Google wonderful?

This great company has again shown the breadth and directness of its
vision. The straightforward plan to digitise some of the world's great
libraries takes one's breath away, and they do it with serious ambition
and a scaleable approach which means that in some sense it is surely bound
to work. There is no better use for the massive cash pile that Google
raised from its flotation (IMHO).

Librarians will cheer and I believe that publishers too will in due course
realise what a great ally Google is becoming. So I am entirely in favour
of it. With apologies for asking the emperor has no clothes question, but
isn't there a problem. Where is the informed legal opinion? Surely
Stanford and Michigan libraries will have sought legal opinion.

If the plan is to digitise the whole of the Stanford and Michigan
University libraries, how solid is the proposition that it is legally OK
to do this for works in copyright if the databases are restricted to
searching and for bibliographic content? This is uncharted territory,
because I reckon that most publishers would think that their ownership or
control of the copyrights would allow them to prevent this. Are the
publishers and lawyers wrong who think that their statement on the
title-verso page that 'no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form etc... without
prior permission' ? Have they been deluding themselves? Is Google planning
to cope with this by doing the conversion and then accommodating any
publishers who object by witholding the texts for those books. Could that
be an adequate defence for any imagined copy-right breach?

Congratulations to Google....but can it fly? I am agog to know the answer
and surely somebody on this list has the answers (even if its moot and
there are none!)

Adam Hodgkin