Chris Jennings
CMMN 400
David Myers
October 22, 2009
I want to be able to search the world’s library, but I don’t think Google should rush into this project. The idea of having access to these millions of books is wonderful and would do a great deal for globalization and the rapid spread of new ideas and opinions, particularly where the language barrier is concerned (Toobin, 2007), but this is not a project which should be undertaken haphazardly, which it is if there is so much concern over unorganized citations and sloppy scanning (Toobin, 2007).
Obviously, copyright laws are a major concern in this fight. According to the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998, copyright expires after the author has been dead 70 years or, in the case of corporate authorship, 95 years after publication (S.505, 1998). Google says that scanning books still under copyright falls under fair use for copyright laws as a block of 40 or so words around the search terms is available through the search function, but several publishing houses say that the very act of scanning these books poses a threat to the copyright because Google made a copy of the book without permission or payment to the publishing houses, even though suing publishers like Simon & Schuster, the Penguin Group and McGraw Hill are partners in Google Book Search (Toobin, 2007). Furthermore, several publishing houses fear the Google will break antitrust laws by holding a clear monopoly on the Internet book search market (Kennedy, 2009, p. 13), although Google started out as the primary force in some markets, but was quickly overrun by stronger competitors, notably in video (YouTube) and blog search (technorati.com) (Toobin, 2007).
While I do find the antitrust and copyright infringement concerns very valid, I recognize the inevitability of Google Book Search’s victory. Recent history has shown that Internet developments evolve far too quickly for the law to keep up — Google even acknowledged this with the Charles Darwin quote “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change” (Toobin, 2007). Music, television and film all have hundreds of places on the Internet where they can be view for free without advertisement even though there are clear laws against this as people are always able to find loopholes in the law. The introduction of torrents into the music-downloading scene, for example, allows people who would otherwise be labeled pirates to slip right through the current copyright laws. I may be no media law expert, but I know a losing battle when I see one. However, it would be irresponsible for the publishing houses and the Authors Guild to give up the fight completely as this would allow Google to proceed unchecked and, in my opinion, nothing is more dangerous than giving a powerful corporation free reign without any boundaries or limitations since the practices of the Bush administration have proven this is at the very least economically, if not ethically, unsound, and thusly Google should proceed with caution and intelligence in expanding the book search program.
Works Cited
Kennedy, R. (2009). Law in virtual worlds. Journal of Internet Law, 12(10), 3-20.
Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, S.505, 105th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1998).
Toobin, J. (2007, February 5). Google’s moon shot. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/05/070205fa_fact_toobin?currentage=all
