RE: AAP/Google in Chronicle of Higher Education

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

> What possible difference would it make for Google to "stop
> scanning"..its not the scanning but display and access.

I think that publishers are concerned that once Google owns complete scans
of their books, it will be much harder to keep those complete scans from
getting out onto the open Web in an uncontrolled way.  Better to stop the
scans from happening than to let the scanning continue and count on the
good faith of those who control the scanned copies.  The fact that people
scan stuff all the time is irrelevant -- these two factors make Google's
project at least somewhat unique:

1.  Google is doing wholesale scanning of large numbers of entire books,
    which is unusual;
2.  Google is in a position to make those entire books easily available
    to the whole world, in violation of copyright.

You and I know, of course, that Google is an honest and upright company
that would never do anything illegal or immoral.  But if our liveliehoods
were tied up in the integrity of copyright, we might be less sanguine
about the situation.

I hasten to add, here, that I'm not siding with the publishers.  I love
the Google Print idea, and I very much hope that the project continues.
But you asked what difference it makes to publishers whether the scanning
continues, and I suspect that the reasoning I've laid out is probably
pretty close to what they're thinking.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu