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1. Comment - UC Joins Google Book Search Project

   (Aug 10, 2006 - 8:49 AM)

   Copyright laws exist to encourage the production of knowledge - a public good produced at the expense of private individuals. Part of that means giving authors a chance to recoup value from their works. Google Books will help authors do that by having book contents come up in searches, so more people will learn about books they want to buy. In terms of books where copyright has expired, (quite possibly the author is dead, the estate is settled, the publication company has disbanded, the distributor has been absorbed into another mega-company, etc) the cause of producing knowledge is better served by freeing up the information from its fixed location inside libraries and archives.
   
   Sure Google is doing this for business reasons. Companies sell pure drinking water for business reasons too. It's still a good thing. Overall, our species is better off, and the information gap between rich and poor countries will close, bringing more smart minds "to the table" of knowledge production.
   
   All good.
   
   And since advancing knowledge is why we fund public institutions, and we have no problem with them using external vendors in their work, generally speaking, why not let them participate in this? Its not like UC has the resources to create a world-searchable text database that would be better than what Google can do. Even trying to do that would be a waste of public funds, when a private-public partnership can solve the problem immediately.