Originally published January 4 2006
HarperCollins to digitize its current titles
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
In order to take back control of its content from search engines, HarperCollins hopes to digitize its book catalogue. Its first books should be digitized by the middle of next year.
HARPERCOLLINS, the book publisher, yesterday acted to assert control over its copyright by unveiling a plan to digitise its book catalogue rather than hand titles to Google and rival internet search engines.
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The publisher, owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, is following the rival Random House in trying to wrest back control of its content from search engines intent on digitising copies of books.
HarperCollins will hire a technology company to help to digitise its current titles --- it releases about 3,500 to 5,000 books a year worldwide --- plus a further 20,000 to 30,000 backlist titles.
This approach contrasts with Random House, owned by Bertlesmann of Germany, which said last month that it would introduce a "pay-per-page-view" model --- charging four cents a page after offering the reader an initial sample of pages for free.
Underlying the moves by both companies to digitise their titles is an increasingly tense relationship between publishers and search engines.
Both HarperCollins and Random House are strongly opposed to Google Library, an initiative by the search engine to digitise and index copyright material, which would make extracts available online.
In October, the Association of American Publishers launched a legal action against Google, alleging breach of copyright.
That action is supported by HarperCollins and by Random House.
But the publishers are also keen to work with Google, Amazon and other search engines, so long as they have greater control over their content.
HarperCollins hopes to digitise its first books by the middle of next year, after selecting a technology partner by the middle of next month.
Random House said that it was still in discussions about introducing pay-per-page-viewing.
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