Lecture Questions Google’s Role in Libraries and the Digital Future
by Adam Piore
Google’s efforts to create a massive digital library of books could, if left unchecked, create a monopoly that would allow the company to charge virtually any amount for access to publications while restricting the rights of public libraries that have long provided them for free.
“Do we want one commercial enterprise to have so much control over so much information?” asked historian Robert Darnton at a lecture delivered at the Shapiro Center on Sept. 17, titled “Google, Libraries and the Digital Future.”
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Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library and a noted historian whose expertise includes the history of the book, has been sounding such alarms for more than a year, since he published a widely noted article in The New York Review of Books.
His immediate focus is on a proposed class-action settlement reached last year between Google, the Authors Guild and five major book publishers.
The plaintiffs sued in 2005, alleging that Google’s scanning of out-of-print library books violated their copyrights. In the far-reaching settlement, Google agreed to pay copyright holders $125 million and grant publishers a cut of the revenue generated from any book sales or ads placed next to e-publications. In exchange, Google would move ahead with its plans for the online book registry.
But what concerns Darnton most about the settlement is the fine print—and the lack of it. The settlement’s terms would apply to all authors in the future who have similar issues, not just those who signed the agreement. And it contains a clause that could prevent competitors from getting better terms for out-of-print books. Perhaps most troubling, Darnton said, it allows Google to distribute books whenever the copyright holder can’t be located.
The result: Google will amass a colossal library and gain unprecedented control over the world’s books. “We provided Google with books in the first place, and now we are being asked to buy them back,” he said.
Google, Darnton acknowledged, has a powerful “utopian” argument in its favor. By creating the library, it will offer the general public access to rare and out-of-print books that might otherwise be unavailable. For its part, Google has promised to provide one computer terminal to each library with free access to its content. It also maintains that its own library will be priced so that “every school in American can access it.”
Even so, Darnton is still wary. “Google is a commercial institution that exists to make money; libraries exist to provide books.”
He added, Google would be “like a toll collector” that “can charge any price it likes for access to the road.”
The current settlement was recently taken off the table, having received a large number of objections from countries, states, authors, nonprofit institutions and law professors. Most notably, last month, the U.S. Justice Department also weighed in on the case, warning that the agreement, as it is written, probably violates antitrust laws. Negotiations with the department are currently underway and will probably alter the settlement.
The judge on the case, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, postponed a hearing on the settlement on Oct. 7 and will instead hold a hearing on how to proceed with the case.
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