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Google, Copyright and a Universal Library

Peter Singer ABC Technology and Games Updated 15 Apr 2011 (First posted 14 Apr 2011)
library

Utopia vs. Copyright. Who will, and who should, win?

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Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written. Then, in 2004, Google announced that it would begin digitally scanning all the books held by five major research libraries. Suddenly, the library of utopia seemed within reach.

Indeed, a digital universal library would be even better than any earlier thinker could have imagined, because every work would be available to everyone, everywhere, at all times. And the library could include not only books and articles, but also paintings, music, films, and every other form of creative expression that can be captured in digital form.

But Google's plan had a catch. Most of the works held by those research libraries are still in copyright. Google said that it would scan the entire book, irrespective of its copyright status, but that users searching for something in copyrighted books would be shown only a snippet. This, it argued, was "fair use" - and thus permitted under copyright laws in the same way that one may quote a sentence or two from a book for the purpose of a review or discussion.

Publishers and authors disagreed, and some sued Google for breach of copyright, eventually agreeing to settle their claim in exchange for a share of Google's revenue. Last month, in a Manhattan court, Judge Denny Chin rejected that proposed settlement, in part because it would have given Google a de facto monopoly over the digital versions of so-called "orphan" books - that is, books that are still in copyright, but no longer in print, and whose copyright ownership is difficult to determine.

Chin held that the United States Congress, not a court, was the appropriate body to decide who should be entrusted with guardianship over orphan books, and on what terms. He was surely right, at least in so far as we are considering matters within US jurisdiction. These are large and important issues that affect not only authors, publishers, and Google, but anyone with an interest in the diffusion and availability of knowledge and culture. So, while Chin's decision is a temporary setback on the way to a universal library, it provides an opportunity to reconsider how the dream can best be realized.

The central issue is this: how can we make books and articles - not just snippets, but entire works - available to everyone, while preserving the rights of the works' creators? To answer that, of course, we need to decide what those rights are. Just as inventors are given patents so that they can profit from their inventions for a limited time, so, too, authors were originally given copyright for a relatively short period - in the US, it was initially only 14 years from the first publication of the work.

For most authors, that would be enough time to earn the bulk of the income that they would ever receive from their writings; after that, the works would be in the public domain. But corporations build fortunes on copyright, and repeatedly pushed Congress to extend it, to the point that in the US it now lasts for 70 years after the creator's death. (The 1998 legislation responsible for the last extension was nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" because it allowed the Walt Disney Company to retain copyright of its famous cartoon character.)

It is because copyright lasts so long that as many as three-quarters of all library books are "orphaned." This vast collection of knowledge, culture, and literary achievement is inaccessible to most people. Digitizing it would make it available to anyone with Internet access. As Peter Brantley, Director of Technology for the California Digital Library, has put it: "We have a moral imperative to reach out to our library shelves, grab the material that is orphaned, and set it on top of scanners."

Robert Darnton, Director of the Harvard University Library, has proposed an alternative to Google's plans: a digital public library, funded by a coalition of foundations, working in tandem with a coalition of research libraries. Darnton's plan falls short of a universal library, because works in print and in copyright would be excluded; but he believes that Congress might grant a non-commercial public library the right to digitize orphan books.

That would be a huge step in the right direction, but we should not give up the dream of a universal digital public library. After all, books still in print are likely to be the ones that contain the most up-to-date information, and the ones that people most want to read.

Many European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, Israel, and New Zealand, have adopted legislation that creates a "public lending right" - that is, the government recognizes that enabling hundreds of people to read a single copy of a book provides a public good, but that doing so is likely to reduce sales of the book. The universal public library could be allowed to digitize even works that are in print and in copyright, in exchange for fees paid to the publisher and author based on the number of times the digital version is read.

If we can put a man on the Moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library. At that point, we will face another moral imperative, one that will be even more difficult to fulfill: expanding Internet access beyond the less than 30% of the world's population that currently has it.

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is The Life You Can Save.

Comments (6)

Add your comment

  • What is this :

    05 Jul 2011 5:32:06pm

    Having all the information in the world in one place is probably the worst idea in all of human history.

    Information is best being duplicated many many times, and in that way it can't be controlled by any one source.

  • Skeptical Observer :

    22 Apr 2011 12:55:40pm

    The value of any creation is the use to which it will be put. Literary and similar works may be used for entertainment (in which case commercial interest should dominate) or for research (in which free intellectual access should dominate).
    Reference books are horrendously difficult and expensive to produce. Look at the cost of producing "The Oxford Textbook of Medicine" - if free access is granted there will be no means of recouping the costs of production and that single point reference would be lost - though most of the information can be found in a more time consuming online search. What is being bought is speed of access, and many large health providers have provided free access to their employees.
    Google should NOT have the right to distribute information free of charge for to do so would remove the incentive to produce reference works. Access should be either pay per view or time limited rental for all copyright works.

    • Neil :

      06 Jul 2011 9:54:16am

      this is the same as what is happening with the entertainment industry in which people are downloading shows rather than paying for them which removes the incentive to make quality shows because there is no money in it.

      You can't have a world where people don't make money, or some form of compensation for their work, because otherwise those people will starve, or worse, just not do the work and do something else to put food on the table. In the end the quest for a world full of free information may well become a world full of no, or at least useless information.

  • Patich :

    20 Apr 2011 9:56:04pm

    Authors have to eat publisher have to make money. It you can devise an anti-hack-proof data base the universal library may make sense. But, how can you take seriously the ramblings of a man who postulates that killing a deer a putting the venison in your freezer is an immoral act. Yet, staying home and having sex with your pet chimpanzee is not.

  • jeltz ®:

    15 Apr 2011 2:24:26pm

    In my judgment, the best compromise is universal access, paid for by a license fee on all technology that can be used to view it at point of sale, or some other from of universal tax.

    Information is for the common good, and should be paid for by common means. That way it does not matter who scans the books, Google, non-profit etc, the slice of the copyright pie due orphaned works will follow those prepared to look after them.

    You will never trace or enforce copyright without imposing cumbersome and unusable tracking systems.

    The creators of works can then vie for their share of the copyright pie by the normal free market means. A tracking system of how many times a work is viewed to assist this need not intrude on users, since they have pre-paid there universal access right and there are no further cost implications for them.

    Why should I pre-pay for a journal article that may well not contain detail that is anticipated from its abstract? And yet if I do not pay before viewing, the temptation not to pay at all becomes strong. In my case, the publishers have just lost a sale. Under universal access, the copyright tax paid for on my computer has in a sense pre-paid my right to see the article and the publisher is ahead on the game.

    Publishers need to wake up and see the sense of this system; that is those who are not just in the game for unjustifiable profits of course.

  • JA'Lobo :

    15 Apr 2011 1:56:02pm

    " ... The universal public library could be allowed to digitize even works that are in print and in copyright, in exchange for fees paid to the publisher and author based on the number of times the digital version is read. ... "

    I would add that for new and unwritten titles there ought be the additional mechanism of authors being able to bypass the traditional publishing mechanisms all together, and for them to be able to form a direct relationship with the "library".

    Our economy is overly full, in my opinion, of redundant agents and retailers who do least, take most, and in so doing have long been the biggest impediment to wide scale "quality" information dispersal as a matter of international interest, wherein we all have at least one factor which we all share in common.

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