The dream of all books, free, all

public domain book digitization years Digital copyright Creative Commons

(A news / opinion about the digital books that support for 6 years with the Internet Archive scanning project novels and literature of Argentina in the 30s)

The dream of all books, free, for all

16/05/11

PorROBERT Darnton. HISTORIAN, DIRECTOR OF THE LIBRARY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

said:

On Tuesday 22 March, Denny Chin, a federal judge in Manhattan, rejected the settlement between Google, which aims to digitize every book ever published to date, and a group of authors and publishers that had sued the company for violating copyright.

The ruling is a victory for the common good, as it prevents one company from monopolizing access to our common cultural heritage.
However, we should not give up the dream of Google to place all the world's books available to everyone. Instead, we should build a public digital library deliver these digital copies free to readers. Yes, many problems stand-legal, financial, technological, political. All can be resolved.

Chin invited Google and litigants to rewrite the agreement. But Google may well refuse to change their basic business strategy. That's why we need is an option, non-commercial public digital library.

A coalition of foundations could provide money and a coalition of research libraries could provide the books. The library of course respect the copyright and is likely to exclude works that are on sale now, unless their authors would facilitate them. Books include orphans, assuming the U.S. Congress passed laws to free for noncommercial use on a truly public library.

Delete this from quixotic would be to ignore digital projects that have proven their value and feasibility over the last twenty years.

All major research libraries have been scanned from their collections.

Large companies such as Knowledge Commons and the Internet Archive has digitized millions of books.

A number of countries are also determined to beat Google to scan the entire contents of their national libraries.

France plans to invest 750 million euros to digitize their cultural treasures, the National Library of the Netherlands is trying to digitize all books and periodicals published from 1470 Dutch, Australia, Finland and Norway are pursuing their own efforts.

Maybe Google itself could join the cause of public digital library. Have scanned about 15 million books.

Two million of that total are in the public domain and may be transferred to the library as the basis of the collection.
The company did not lose anything with your generosity and could earn admiration for his good deed.

With digital magic and sheer audacity, Google showed how we can transform the intellectual riches of our libraries, those books lying inert on their shelves unused. But only a public digital library will give readers what they need to meet the challenges of the XXI century: a vast collection of resources that can be exploited, for free, by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Copyright The New York Times, 2011. Translation by Carnelli.

http://www.clarin.com/opinion/sueno-libros-gratis_0_481751854.html