James Temple, Tech Chronicles; Google Books debate gets personal:
"The increasingly acrimonious squabble over the Google Books legal settlement has officially slid past that threshold -- all too familiar during heated political campaigns -- where the debate becomes about the debate.
The Open Book Alliance issued a statement today complaining not about the terms of the revised settlement offering -- that press release was yesterday -- but about how Google rudely backed out of an opportunity to publicly wrangle over those terms. And how that means they're hiding things.
First, Google released the settlement's details at the witching hour of midnight on Friday. Then last night, Google refused to address the facts behind the book settlement on a widely respected national television news program.
Google continues to say they would like to have an open discussion on the merits of their revised settlement. However, the only discussions about the settlement seem to be occurring behind the closed doors of the company's Mountain View, Calif. campus.
According to TechCrunch, Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy had agreed to appear on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to debate the topic with Harvard professor Robert Darnton. With little notice, however, Silicon Valley attorney Gary Reback was added to the line up.
Reback spearheaded the antitrust crusade against Microsoft last decade and, by the way, co-chairs the Open Books Alliance, whose members include Google competitors Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon.com.
Apparently Google didn't want an engineer to spar with a lawyer on national television, which doesn't seem as unreasonable to us as the incredulous tone of the Open Books Alliance statement would have one think.
As in politics, focusing on these sorts of trivial matters becomes a convenient stand in for the issues themselves because, of course, those issues are incredibly complex.
Besides, it's easier to incite consumer emotions by saying a massive company is hiding from a public debate than by explaining that, say, Open Books Alliance member Amazon.com is worried about how the deal will affect their own dominance over the book industry."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=51855#ixzz0XDgJfxXd
Showing posts with label Dan Clancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Clancy. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
More questions than answers on Google Books; CNet News, 8/29/09
Tom Krazit via CNet News; More questions than answers on Google Books:
"Google's Dan Clancy had patiently answered question after question regarding Google's' Book Search settlement with publishers and authors until late in the afternoon Friday, when he was finally left speechless.
A young man from the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information asked Clancy what kind of message was sent when Google decided to "copy first and answer questions later." The question--for which there's no safe answer, if you're in Clancy's shoes--perhaps underscored the core of the opposition to the settlement, reached in October, after Google was sued in 2005 for scanning out-of-print works without explicit permission.
If the class action settlement is approved, Google stands to gain control of a priceless asset. Jason Schultz, acting director of UC Berkeley's Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic, called it "the largest copyright-licensing deal in U.S. history:" the right to display the contents of out-of-print books that are still covered by copyright protection.
Google, however, has already scanned more than 10 million books. At the moment, it's not allowed to display more than a few snippets of copyright-protected books for which it doesn't have an explicit agreement with the rights holders. If the settlement is approved, Google will suddenly flip a switch and offer full-text searches of those books, as well as links to bookstores.
Nothing vexes Google's opponents more than the fact that the company assumed that it had the right to digitize nearly 100 years of written material without serious negotiations with those rights holders until it was sued. Authors have until Friday to decide if they want to opt out of the settlement and preserve the right to sue Google on their own for digitizing their book without their permission, though they can tell Google to remove their books from the Book Search archive, even if they remain in the class...
But taking Google at its word requires trust, and trust in corporations is in short supply at this point in American history. It's taken perhaps longer than it should have, but Google is gradually realizing that a fair portion of the public no longer sees it as a cute little Silicon Valley start-up with idealistic stars in its eyes, one that insists "you can make money without doing evil."
Google damaged that trust when it began scanning books without permission, arguing that it was allowed to do so under fair-use laws. Publishers and author groups also harmed that trust when they turned over the key to the castle by bringing the lawsuit as a class action, suddenly making plaintiffs out of millions of authors who did not necessarily appreciate the future value of digital books in 2005, nor authorize the negotiation of the rights to their works."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10321371-265.html
"Google's Dan Clancy had patiently answered question after question regarding Google's' Book Search settlement with publishers and authors until late in the afternoon Friday, when he was finally left speechless.
A young man from the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information asked Clancy what kind of message was sent when Google decided to "copy first and answer questions later." The question--for which there's no safe answer, if you're in Clancy's shoes--perhaps underscored the core of the opposition to the settlement, reached in October, after Google was sued in 2005 for scanning out-of-print works without explicit permission.
If the class action settlement is approved, Google stands to gain control of a priceless asset. Jason Schultz, acting director of UC Berkeley's Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic, called it "the largest copyright-licensing deal in U.S. history:" the right to display the contents of out-of-print books that are still covered by copyright protection.
Google, however, has already scanned more than 10 million books. At the moment, it's not allowed to display more than a few snippets of copyright-protected books for which it doesn't have an explicit agreement with the rights holders. If the settlement is approved, Google will suddenly flip a switch and offer full-text searches of those books, as well as links to bookstores.
Nothing vexes Google's opponents more than the fact that the company assumed that it had the right to digitize nearly 100 years of written material without serious negotiations with those rights holders until it was sued. Authors have until Friday to decide if they want to opt out of the settlement and preserve the right to sue Google on their own for digitizing their book without their permission, though they can tell Google to remove their books from the Book Search archive, even if they remain in the class...
But taking Google at its word requires trust, and trust in corporations is in short supply at this point in American history. It's taken perhaps longer than it should have, but Google is gradually realizing that a fair portion of the public no longer sees it as a cute little Silicon Valley start-up with idealistic stars in its eyes, one that insists "you can make money without doing evil."
Google damaged that trust when it began scanning books without permission, arguing that it was allowed to do so under fair-use laws. Publishers and author groups also harmed that trust when they turned over the key to the castle by bringing the lawsuit as a class action, suddenly making plaintiffs out of millions of authors who did not necessarily appreciate the future value of digital books in 2005, nor authorize the negotiation of the rights to their works."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10321371-265.html
Friday, August 28, 2009
Librarians apply scrutiny to Google Books at Berkeley con; ZDNet Government, 8/27/09
Richard Koman via ZDNet Government; Librarians apply scrutiny to Google Books at Berkeley con:
"If you’re in the Bay Area and you want a full day of wonky debate, check out UC Berkeley’s Google Books Conference. It features panels on how the Google Books settlement affect data mining, privacy, information quality and public access.
The conference comes hard on the heels of the formation of the Open Book Alliance, an organization driven by the Internet Archive and including Amazon, Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as library and small publishing groups among its members. Most of the speakers are opposed to the deal but Google’s Tom [sic] Clancy will be there to make the company’s argument....
But if Google is the last library, as Berkeley linguist Geoff Nunberg says, it’s a pretty bad one. That means serious library science must be applied to the online collection before we should outsource the history of human (or at least Western) knowledge to Google:
Google Book Search is almost laughably unusable for serious research, UC Berkeley’s Nunberg said. For example, he pointed out that the Charles Dickens classic “A Tale of Two Cities” is listed in Google Book Search as having been published in 1800; Dickens was born in 1812."
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5309
"If you’re in the Bay Area and you want a full day of wonky debate, check out UC Berkeley’s Google Books Conference. It features panels on how the Google Books settlement affect data mining, privacy, information quality and public access.
The conference comes hard on the heels of the formation of the Open Book Alliance, an organization driven by the Internet Archive and including Amazon, Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as library and small publishing groups among its members. Most of the speakers are opposed to the deal but Google’s Tom [sic] Clancy will be there to make the company’s argument....
But if Google is the last library, as Berkeley linguist Geoff Nunberg says, it’s a pretty bad one. That means serious library science must be applied to the online collection before we should outsource the history of human (or at least Western) knowledge to Google:
Google Book Search is almost laughably unusable for serious research, UC Berkeley’s Nunberg said. For example, he pointed out that the Charles Dickens classic “A Tale of Two Cities” is listed in Google Book Search as having been published in 1800; Dickens was born in 1812."
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5309
Google Book Search - Is it The Last Library?; Register, 8/29/09
Cate Metz via Register; Google Book Search - Is it The Last Library?:
"Geoff Nunberg, one of America's leading linguistics researchers, laid this rather ominous tag on Google's controversial book-scanning project amidst an amusingly-heated debate this afternoon on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
"This is likely to be The Last Library," Nunberg said during a University conference dedicated to Google Book Search and the company's accompanying $125m settlement with US authors and publishers. "Nobody is very likely to scan these books again. The cost of scanning isn't going to come down. There's no Moore's Law for scanning.
"We don't know who's going to be running these files 100 years from now. It may be Google. It may be News Corp. It may WalMart. But we can say with some certainty that 100 years from now, these are the very files scholars will be using."...
Predictably, Google Book Search engineering lead Dan Clancy takes issue with The Last Library characterization. He acknowledges that some of the works Google has scanned will never be scanned again. But he's adamant that although Google has a 10-million-book head start - and a monopoly-building boondoggle of a settlement with authors and publishers - others will compete.
"I don't view Google Book Search as the one and only library," he said. "I don't think it should be and I don't think it will be - in part because, remember, a library is about accessing information, not just accessing books. Libraries were created because books were where information was in the past.
"Libraries are about information, and...Google is not the only book-scanning activity in existence today. There will continue to be other activities. And the internet provides all sorts of information that are linked together in all sorts of ways."...
Though he wouldn't say how much Google has spent scanning books, Clancy admitted it wasn't cheap. "It's a lot," he said. "If this was just tens of millions of dollars, we wouldn't all be siting here debating this. Microsoft would have kept scanning. And there would be much more incentive to do this.""
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/29/google_books/
"Geoff Nunberg, one of America's leading linguistics researchers, laid this rather ominous tag on Google's controversial book-scanning project amidst an amusingly-heated debate this afternoon on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
"This is likely to be The Last Library," Nunberg said during a University conference dedicated to Google Book Search and the company's accompanying $125m settlement with US authors and publishers. "Nobody is very likely to scan these books again. The cost of scanning isn't going to come down. There's no Moore's Law for scanning.
"We don't know who's going to be running these files 100 years from now. It may be Google. It may be News Corp. It may WalMart. But we can say with some certainty that 100 years from now, these are the very files scholars will be using."...
Predictably, Google Book Search engineering lead Dan Clancy takes issue with The Last Library characterization. He acknowledges that some of the works Google has scanned will never be scanned again. But he's adamant that although Google has a 10-million-book head start - and a monopoly-building boondoggle of a settlement with authors and publishers - others will compete.
"I don't view Google Book Search as the one and only library," he said. "I don't think it should be and I don't think it will be - in part because, remember, a library is about accessing information, not just accessing books. Libraries were created because books were where information was in the past.
"Libraries are about information, and...Google is not the only book-scanning activity in existence today. There will continue to be other activities. And the internet provides all sorts of information that are linked together in all sorts of ways."...
Though he wouldn't say how much Google has spent scanning books, Clancy admitted it wasn't cheap. "It's a lot," he said. "If this was just tens of millions of dollars, we wouldn't all be siting here debating this. Microsoft would have kept scanning. And there would be much more incentive to do this.""
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/29/google_books/
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Google pushes for new law on orphan books; CNet News, 7/31/09
Tom Krazit via CNet News; Google pushes for new law on orphan books:
"If those organizations attacking Google's book search settlement with publishers spent as much time lobbying Congress for better laws concerning those issues, perhaps the controversy would go away, Google's chief Book Search engineer suggested Thursday night.
Google's quest to convince the world it has nothing to fear by its settlement with publishers came to the Computer History Museum Thursday where Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, defended the settlement before a few hundred attendees who submitted written questions to John Hollar, president and CEO of the museum...
The Internet Archive has been one of the more prominent critics of Google's Book Search settlement, and distributed a statement prior to Thursday's event saying just that. "...no one else has the same legal protections that Google has. Would the parties to the settlement amend the settlement to extend legal liability indemnification to any and all digitizers of orphan works? If not, why not leave orphans out of the settlement and compel a legislative solution instead of striking a private deal in a district court?"
Under the settlement, the Books Rights Registry is allowed to cut deals with other companies or organizations looking to digitize books, but they are not allowed to extend the same privileges Google enjoys with respect to orphan works, which Clancy estimated as about 10 percent of the books that are out of print but still protected by copyright.
That's why a legislative solution that fixes the problems concerning orphan works is the best outcome for everyone with a stake in book digitization, and Google is leaning on Congress to get such a law passed, Clancy said. Given the pressing issues before Congress at the moment--not to mention the complexity of copyright law--finding champions for such legislation has been difficult, he said.
Google thinks that by obtaining the right to digitize orphan works, it will stimulate demand for digital book scanning that eventually forces Congress to act. Any law passed to loosen restrictions on the use of orphan works would take precedent over Google's settlement."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10300887-93.html
"If those organizations attacking Google's book search settlement with publishers spent as much time lobbying Congress for better laws concerning those issues, perhaps the controversy would go away, Google's chief Book Search engineer suggested Thursday night.
Google's quest to convince the world it has nothing to fear by its settlement with publishers came to the Computer History Museum Thursday where Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, defended the settlement before a few hundred attendees who submitted written questions to John Hollar, president and CEO of the museum...
The Internet Archive has been one of the more prominent critics of Google's Book Search settlement, and distributed a statement prior to Thursday's event saying just that. "...no one else has the same legal protections that Google has. Would the parties to the settlement amend the settlement to extend legal liability indemnification to any and all digitizers of orphan works? If not, why not leave orphans out of the settlement and compel a legislative solution instead of striking a private deal in a district court?"
Under the settlement, the Books Rights Registry is allowed to cut deals with other companies or organizations looking to digitize books, but they are not allowed to extend the same privileges Google enjoys with respect to orphan works, which Clancy estimated as about 10 percent of the books that are out of print but still protected by copyright.
That's why a legislative solution that fixes the problems concerning orphan works is the best outcome for everyone with a stake in book digitization, and Google is leaning on Congress to get such a law passed, Clancy said. Given the pressing issues before Congress at the moment--not to mention the complexity of copyright law--finding champions for such legislation has been difficult, he said.
Google thinks that by obtaining the right to digitize orphan works, it will stimulate demand for digital book scanning that eventually forces Congress to act. Any law passed to loosen restrictions on the use of orphan works would take precedent over Google's settlement."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10300887-93.html
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Google Books causes concern; Boston Globe, 7/24/09
D.C. Denison via Boston Globe; Google Books causes concern: Digital library’s growth has some worried it may be building a monopoly:
"Dan Clancy makes librarians nervous.
When the Google Books engineering director participated in a panel discussion at the Boston Public Library this week, his opening remarks focused on the search engine’s efforts to enable access for “every kid in Arkansas’’ to Harvard-size digital libraries. But soon afterward, he was hearing from librarians on the panel that they felt “queasy’’ about Google Books...
“Google is creating a mega bookstore the likes of which we have never seen,’’ said the panel organizer Maura Marx, executive director of Open Knowledge Commons, a Boston nonprofit organization. “People are very uncomfortable with the idea that one corporation has so much power over such a large collection of knowledge.’’
A growing concern, which was raised during the library panel, is that Google will end up with monopolistic control of access to millions of scanned digital books. This concern was heightened when Google negotiated a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, groups that represent authors and publishers, after they sued Google to stop the search company from digitizing books."
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/07/24/google_books_causes_concern_among_librarians_authors/
"Dan Clancy makes librarians nervous.
When the Google Books engineering director participated in a panel discussion at the Boston Public Library this week, his opening remarks focused on the search engine’s efforts to enable access for “every kid in Arkansas’’ to Harvard-size digital libraries. But soon afterward, he was hearing from librarians on the panel that they felt “queasy’’ about Google Books...
“Google is creating a mega bookstore the likes of which we have never seen,’’ said the panel organizer Maura Marx, executive director of Open Knowledge Commons, a Boston nonprofit organization. “People are very uncomfortable with the idea that one corporation has so much power over such a large collection of knowledge.’’
A growing concern, which was raised during the library panel, is that Google will end up with monopolistic control of access to millions of scanned digital books. This concern was heightened when Google negotiated a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, groups that represent authors and publishers, after they sued Google to stop the search company from digitizing books."
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/07/24/google_books_causes_concern_among_librarians_authors/
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