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Today, I was watching CNBC and saw that Google launched their "Print" effort that allows users to search inside books. This is similar to Amazon's feature except they didn't really ask anyone if they could do it or not. Of course publishers and authors are in an uproar and have sued, but with true bravado, the Google scanners are still working round the clock to make their vision come true. Now Microsoft is joining the scanning frenzy. MSN is only going to be doing public domain content (for now), but it's a start. I sympathize with Google and Microsoft on their scanning efforts for a number of reasons:

1. They're right. Hardware books (ie printed on paper) are difficult to store, difficult to search through, and difficult to find. Making them ALL digital will help open up the archives of human knowledge and creativity to all

2. They're not going to show the whole book. You just get snippets. Haven't you heard of the fair use law?

3. The arguements by the publishers and authors guilds have been really really lame:

I heard something to this effect on the news today:

Publisher's advocate: "By doing this, Google is basically saying that anyone can bring a scanner to a library and scan all of the books just like they're doing."
Reporter: "Is that really practical?"
Publisher's advocate: "Oh yes, definitely. Scanners are very inexpensive now."

Ummm...why wouldn't I just check the book out and scan it at home if I wanted to do that? What about OCR'ing the whole thing...there is definitely a technological barrier there too. The publishers have demonstrated they have NO IDEA what century they're in and that they have NO UNDERSTANDING of the technology they are so afraid of.

Until the publishers can come up with someone who can speak intelligently about the whole thing (Lessig is already on Google's side so the publishers are up a creek with whoever they find in my opinion), they're screwed.

See For Yourself.












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