Google digitizing all books

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Sasha Spektor wrote:

> Hi Sarah, I'm sorry you find yourself in such a disadvantageous
> position:)  It's a personal opinion of mine -- i think information
> should belong to everyone. And it's not like google is stealing other
> people's ideas.  It's making them accessible.  Wouldn't you want your
> work to be read in places where your book cannot get to?  Let's even
> say that you can make some money by not allowing google to scan it.
> But you are not writing for money, aren't you? You are writing to get
> tenure (unless you already have one), to express yourself, to
> formulate new and exciting ideas, etc.  The advantages of publishing
> work for academics are not monetary, or, at least, not in the 
> copyright way.  You can get famous, known; you could get a good job
> because of your work, but it's unlikely that you would get paid for
> publishing it, no?  Your finantial enumeration comes from being paid
> by the university on a salary basis (I'm obviously assuming), not
> from publishing a book.  I'm sitting here at home, preparing a
> lecture for tomorrow and if I could get some additional information
> about it from scanned books on google, it would make my life and the
> life of my students so much better.  That's a utilitarian
> approach--and I'm not necessarily a proponent of one, but it also
> works.  That google is a huge corporation doesn't change the fact 
> that--in my opinion--they are doing a truly amazing thing--a
> revolutionary thing equal in status to the creation of internet
> itself--by creating a digital library.  Objecting to that, I think,
> is similar to objecting to Bill Gates's efforts to eradicate malaria.
> And sure we can spend endless hours arguing--Dmitry
> Nabokov-like--that the author has earned by his/her hard labor the
> right to be paid for the work done.  But to extend this argument to
> the publishing world of Slavists seems to me unnecessary.  Not to
> deprive our esteemed colleagues of this discussion just because
> you've exceeded the quota, I'm publishing this on Seelangs.  I just
> can't resist. All the best,

There are obviously public goods to be had from making information 
available -- most obviously because others can build on it. But if all 
information were freely available, there would be less incentive for 
people to invest their time and money in developing it. You may be an 
altruist who freely gives his property away, but that doesn't mean 
others should do so as well. A gift is something given freely and 
willingly, not something taken against the owner's will. And at least 
some of what Google proposes is just that -- theft. It doesn't matter 
whether they make profit out of it -- if I take your Rembrandt off your 
wall and hang it on my own, never to earn a penny for me, it is still 
theft because I took your property against your will.

The copyright and patent systems are part of many ways our society 
offers authors and inventors an incentive to produce while also pursuing 
the public good of making the information available to society as a 
whole. It's a balance between the rights of the individual and the good 
of society. If society values a work so highly that it is willing to 
steal it, well then the author/inventor has produced something so 
valuable that s/he deserves to be fairly rewarded.

Many people fall into the trap of thinking that because information is 
intangible, it is worthless. Nothing could be further from the truth. If 
you are about to jump off a cliff and I tell you that you will die as a 
result, how much is that worth to you? Perhaps I should make the 
information a gift on ethical grounds, but that still doesn't make it 
worthless, as evidenced by the gratitude most people feel when someone 
saves their lives. What makes information so different from tangible 
goods is that it can be reproduced indefinitely at virtually no cost. 
But here, too, we face a logical trap: the /value/ of a thing is not the 
same as its /cost/ of production. The value of a thing is what people 
will pay for it. This is стоимость in the sense of ценность, not 
стоимость производства.

If Google is really doing society such a big favor by making all this 
information available, they should do it on a nonprofit basis. If they 
stole it for nothing, they should give to their customers for nothing. 
And I'll bet you that kind of ROI would put a stop to it in a New York 
minute.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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