Categories
Copyright/OCL General

Google Print & The Role Of Libraries

Siva Vaidhyanathan on the recent Google Print u-turn.

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/001841.html

(more at . . . http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/001849.html)

He rightly points out the difference between Google and public libraries . . . .

I wish more libraries would push their rights under copyright. But corporations do not have the same leeway as libraries. Libraries work for us. Corporations work for themselves.

As I said in my talk “The Googlization of Everything” to the American Library Association in June, Google’s plan would have sparked a copyight meltdown. P2P was nothing compared to the fallout from this. And Congress would certainly have ensured that such a meltdown would not have ended well for readers, libraries, or the Internet — none of which have rich lobbyists.