To the people who still do not understand what Google is trying to do with books.
By: Ryan
2009-09-11
Google has embarked on an exceptionally expensive quest to digitize the whole of human knowledge. There is a group of people who wish to stop them.
Something that people seem to forget is that Google is headed by a couple of huge nerds. Scratch that...Google is headed by a couple of huge nerds who are also billionaires. Sometimes they start expensive projects that seem to have no purpose other than seeming really, really, really, cool. Some of these things have arguably low points of utility, some of them (like the project we're talking about here: Google Books) are arguably one of the most important things that humans have ever tried to do.
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To people reading this 50 years from now (because, since it is digital, so long as this server remains, or this project remains, this article will exist exactly as it did when it was written...forever):
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Long before the dawn of digital storage (and for a while after it), Humans stored their knowledge on pieces of flattened out dead tree. Strange as it may sound, this worked for thousands of years. These flattened out dead-trees, however, have several major drawbacks: they doesn't last very long, they smell funny, they are difficult to copy, you can't search them, they are usually stored in a medium that requires copying them all serially, and they are flammable.
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What Google is trying to do, much to the chagrin of the people who put the things on the dead tress, is convert all of these thousands and thousands (and thousands) of books to a digital format that can be copied, searched, sent, stored, accessed, etc. and all done so from anywhere in the world at any time for almost no cost. This goal is as noble as it is costly.
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Now. There is a large group of people (who many believe were hit in the temple with a mallet during their childhood), who believe that this attempt to digitize the whole of human knowledge and rocket us forth across the abyss of ignorance and into the valley of enlightenment is in some way "evil". This is likely caused by them growing up around siblings and peers who were much better looking and much more talented than they were, and tormenting them endlessly for it. The tormentors were evil. Google is not.
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These loathsome wet blankets believe that any move to change things is driven by a desire to steal what little power they have, and transfer it so some vague evil person in some far off place probably eating baby rabbits and laughing maniacally while they watch the depressed, boring waste of space who hates them so much get dumped on prom night over and over again on their crystal ball (which is, undoubtedly, mounted atop a pedestal of human skulls).
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So what is Google trying to do here? Steal the copyrights of the people who toiled endlessly to write stories down on dead tress? Well, no...they're trying to take works of literature that have had their production halted (out-of-print books), and scan them. They will then offer these digitized versions up for sale to book distributors (their competitors) for a small fee, as well as a royalty that goes to the sycophants who originally wrote them.
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What they will NOT be doing, is stealing copyright away from the book publishers. They are not taking the books that they scan and burning them, they are not preventing anybody from doing exactly as they have and digitizing the books. All that they ask is that a small fee is paid to them for the trouble that they have gone through to scan everything. They maintain distribution rights to their own digital copy of the book only. For instance: if amazon decides to scan a copy of, say, Fahrenheit 451, and offer it up for sale, they can! If, however, they decide that scanning Fahrenheit 451 would be too costly, or too difficult or, say, it is out of print they cannot track down a copy of it, they can pay Google a small fee (as well as the typical royalty fee to the original publisher) for a digital copy, and sell that!
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Doesn't that sound wonderful! Well, perhaps it only does if you are not a book publisher or a confused author.
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As a member of the human race: Guys, please, idiots already burned down The Library of Alexandria once, lets not do it again before it is even finished being built.
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cody | 2009-09-11 |
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Thank you Muslim invaders for destroying Alexandria, that was awesome.
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Ryan | 2009-09-11 |
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People trying to stop google books is going to be looked at with equal amounts of facepalmery in the future.
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anonymous | 2009-09-11 |
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Those nerds in charge of Google didn't get to be billionaires out of the pure kindness of their hearts in the service of mankind. Don't think they're scanning all these books and making them available for everyone (assuming they really are going to do that) just to be nice guys. They potentially stand to make a bunch of money off this, not to mention the possibility of tracking people's reading habits (even if they don't do that in an explicitly "evil" way, it's still a lot less privacy than you get by buying a book for cash at the bookstore or reading on at the library). Google isn't evil, but they aren't good either. They're a business.
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Ryan | 2009-09-11 |
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You are right...
Google is, however, going to have a tough time tracking your book purchases after they're resold the scanned copies to amazon (or whoever else).
In addition to that, google knowing my book-purchase history and being able to give me relevant ads as a result of it is perfectly fine with me.
If I want to purchase something "sensitive", I'll just buy the dead-tree copy :).
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anonymous | 2009-09-11 |
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Wasn't Muslims. More along the lines of White, Southern Europeans called Romans under the leadership of one Julius Caesar.
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cody | 2009-09-11 |
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FALSE"-Generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the third century BCE, the library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II. Plutarch (CE 46120) wrote that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar accidentally burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate Achillas' attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea. According to Plutarch's account, this fire spread to the docks and then to the library.
However, this version of events is not confirmed in contemporary accounts of Caesar's visit. In fact, it has been reasonably established that segments of its collection were partially destroyed on several occasions before and after the first century BCE. In any case the contents of the library were substantial up until the time of the Muslim sacking of Alexandria in 642."
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anonymous | 2009-09-11 |
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instead of quoting the first paragraph in wikipedia you should read the entire article and realize that these facts are all in dispute. to lay it all on one group of people is superfluous to the argument that we should support the preservation of knowledge from the past. it is a fact that the library burned, and it is easy to ponder how much further along the human race could have been had the knowledge stored there had not been lost
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cody | 2009-09-11 |
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I've heard it from multiple sources I just used the first one I could find. You say blaming it on one group of people is superfluous which is very valid point , however you had no problem blaming it on the Romans. Islam actually started out as very open minded religion and in fact the Muslims we creating algebra while the Christians were in the dark age burning witches.However Islam was radically reformed a few hundred years into it's history and has reputation for destroying things they declare to be Un-Islamic most recently destroying the giant Buddhas of Afghanistan, so I am apt to believe the Muslims did it.
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Ryan | 2009-09-11 |
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I agree with anonymous here...
Who cares who burned it? It burned.
Instead of arguing over that, lets just make sure that it doesn't happen again. :).
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cody | 2009-09-11 |
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I agreed with that part but I was pointing out that anonymous is a hypocrite.
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anonymous | 2009-09-11 |
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Is anyone else as amused as I am that in the whole "it wasn't Muslims" thread it would seem that nobody used an actual "dead tree" book as a reference? Just thought I'd point that out in a thread about digitizing all book knowledge.
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cody | 2009-09-11 |
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I'm amused that he knew that what I posted was the first paragraph of Wikipedia because that means it was the source he checked for his information but he criticized me for it.
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Ryan | 2009-09-11 |
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Excellent point on many levels.
Dead tree books aren't searchable. This is a HUGE problem in the modern world.
The time-cost for me to find a library with some text that I need and find the book is MUCH higher than the few seconds it takes me to google it.
It's also much MUCH harder for dead-tree books to cite sources (like wikipedia). On wikipedia, I can immediately be linked to the study that they're citing and read the paper that went along with it.
Not so in the case of dead-trees.
This IS going to happen, I just hope it is google that does it. :)
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anonymous | 2009-09-12 |
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the library of alexandria was burnt down multiple times
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Destruction_of_the_Library
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