Google Book Search: Friend or Foe?
Karen Sollins
October 1st, 2009
Google is in search of new property and new services. One of their current activities is scanning books and making them available through Google Book Search. According to the New York Times, their target is to scan 15 million books over a decade. They identify three categories of books: those in the public domain or out of copyright; those in copyright but out of print; and those in print and under copyright. Google’s services include (or will include) book pointers mingled with their normal searches, pointers to library collections, snippets of books where they have limited rights, and the sale of complete digital copies of books. Needless to say, this has raised many hackles, but more importantly raises issues around whether, and if so, under what controls, should this activity be permitted.
On the positive side, Google would be making available a vast supply of books, including those that are otherwise unavailable because they are out of copyright or “orphaned” (meaning they are in copyright but no one is claiming them). This is a significant change in Google’s business model. In the search engine approach, the search turns up a number of links, but the content remains owned and controlled by the source and owner of the information, thus providing a rather competitive and definitely more open business model. As Google “privatizes” the out-of-copyright or orphaned books, they are moving into ownership of the content and thus ownership of the distribution part of the value chain. The two key issues here are a change in Google’s model and the strong possibility of their becoming a monopoly, because once the rights agreements for the books are in place, especially with individual publishers, no one else will have comparable access.
On the other side of the coin, there is significant concern about personal information. Google continues to make statements about respecting privacy, but the current approach enables them not only to know and collate individuals’ searches, but their book purchases and details about their reading habits as well, like when and for how long they read any individual component of the text, for example. In the US, there is strong, legal grounding in the right to privacy about what one reads. Currently, books can be purchased with cash and what happens to them after that can remain completely anonymized. There is a strongly-held belief that libraries, at least public libraries, should not expose the reading habits of their clients, even under government duress. This right to privacy about what one reads and under what circumstances generally continues to be held as a significant right, although it has certainly been threatened from time to time. The concern is both that Google is not bound by such privacy constraints and is in a position to—and has expressed interest in—correlating that information with other information they are already gathering. They view it as a business opportunity to provide recommendations (of particular value to their third-party advertisers) but without significant legal control. Clearly, there are some members of the community that consider targeted advertising to be a significant benefit.
Thus, several key concerns with Google’s agenda with respect to books are (1) the change in Google’s business model, (2) the potential for them to hold a monopoly on significant portions of the written expression of a society or culture, with repercussions in both the business opportunities and potential selective censoring of parts of that body of work, and (3) the threat to current rights of privacy and anonymity with respect to reading habits. On the other side is the increased availability for book material that may otherwise be completely or mostly unavailable at all, by a means that is increasingly familiar to all.
