Originally published October 9 2005
Google Print experiences copyright-infringement attacks
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Google Print will begin its initiative to scan millions of books in American's top libraries. After giving a few months to allow publishers to issue objections to the scanning of their books, Google is ready to make out-of-print and un-copyrighted books available to people online.
With Google's book-scanning program set to resume in earnest this fall, copyright laws that long preceded the internet look to be headed for a digital-age test.
The outcome could determine how easy it will be for people with internet access to benefit from knowledge that's now mostly locked up -- in books sitting on dusty library shelves, many of them out of print.
To prevent the wholesale file-sharing that is plaguing the entertainment industry, Google has set some limits in its library project: Users won't be able to easily print materials or read more than small portions of copyright works online.
Google also says it will send readers hungry for more directly to booksellers and libraries.
To endorse Google's library initiative is to say "it's OK to break into my house because you're going to clean my kitchen," said Sally Morris, chief executive of the U.K.-based Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.
"Just because you do something that's not harmful or (is) beneficial doesn't make it legal."
Morris and other publishers believe Google must get their permission first, as it has under the Print Publisher Program it launched in October 2004, two months before announcing the library initiative.
It scans titles they submit, displays digital images of selected pages triggered by search queries and gives publishers a cut of revenues from accompanying ad displays.
Jim Gerber, Google's director of content partnerships, says the company would get no more than 15 percent of all books ever published if it relied solely on publisher submissions.
Under the Print Library Project, Google is scanning millions of copyright books from libraries at Harvard, Michigan and Stanford along with out-of-copyright materials there and at two other libraries.
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