Tech Shout!

Google’s first batch of “public domain� books and documents, to be indexed in its search engine is being posted online. The company’s library-scanning “Google Print Project� had been announced late last year.

The material being listed consists of books and government documents that are neither protected by copyright, nor entangled in battles over how much material can be scanned and indexed from five major libraries - the New York Public Library, the libraries of the University of Michigan and the University of Oxford, plus the libraries at Harvard and Stanford.

To name a few, Google’s “public domain� works include Henry James novels, Civil War histories; as well as Congressional acts, biographies of wealthy New Yorkers, and other volumes not covered by copyright.

Google very aptly says that very little or infact no access has been there in the past to these collections and so many other written works inspite of the thousands of years that have been spent by human beings to produce it. Now these huge archives of knowledge will be available via a few clicks of the computer mouse through the extraordinaire “Google Print Project� is what the search genius claims. Undoubtedly, the underlying goal being to attract people to click on Google’s highly profitable website ads.

The number of books scanned so far has not yet been revealed by the company. However, it intends to create digital versions of millions of books stacked in the New York Public Library, and the four university libraries in the next couple of years.

The bitter copyright dispute paralyzing its ambitious plans is what Google had not bargained for. Google has been sued by The Authors Guild. The charge being that Google is scanning copyrighted material belonging to the libraries without explicit permission.

Google reaction to the charges is that its project constitutes “fair use� of the material since it plans to show only snippets from the copyrighted books. Owing to the free publicity the publishers will get, they very obviously also stand to benefit from having their works included in this project, Google added.

Earlier this year the scanning of the copyrighted books had been postponed. The reason being that Google wanted to give publishers and content owners time to “opt out�; in other words specify which copyrighted works they didn’t want included in the project. However this strategy did not work and Google was prevented from going ahead with its plans.

This week, the company has resumed scanning of copyrighted material; with an emphasis on books which are no longer in print.

Regardless of the final outcome, Google’s thought of a world-wide library is an engaging one for any avid reader and lover of books across the globe. The thought of such a project being shelved equally saddening and disturbing.