Forum - View topicNEWS: Kadokawa Will Exclude Its Publications From Google Library Project
|
Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
RyanSaotome
 Posts: 4210 Location: Towson, Maryland |
|
||
|
Kadokawa continues to be a terrible money grubbing company.
|
|||
|
|||
Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
|
||
|
I can see why Kadokawa would be hesitant about being part of the Google Library Project, considering Google could make their own determination as to which of their works were "out of copyright" and provide free digital downloads without consent as a result. It's an interesting concept, but how effectively/legitimately it'll work in practice is yet to be seen, and the ease with which it places immense copyright power into the hands of Google is understandably worrisome.
|
|||
|
|||
Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2175 |
|
||
|
Am I reading it right that this isn't Google digitizing all books, but it's them just making an online card catalog? If that's the case then it's pretty lame that Kadokawa would opt out.
If it's actually Google digitizing all books then trying to give them away for free, good on Kadokawa for saying no thanks. Music has already become valueless to many. No reason for them to aid in devaluing literature as well, especially when it's really just so that Google can serve up more ads to people and rake in $$$. |
|||
|
|||
|
Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
|
||
I can't agree to this. If anything, I'm betting it's because Kadokawa doesn't believe the project can prevent users from distributing copies. They're not the only company with this fear, but in a few hundred years, they'll come around. |
|||
|
|||
|
Kikaioh
Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
|
||
From what I understand, it's actually a bit of both. Google is fully digitizing books in order to make their content searchable for their catalog system. with the idea that it makes it easier to find books that contain a certain set of keywords (which is why it was previously known as Book Search). Google does also plan on making books fully available to download for free, but only books that have expired copyrights. They also plan on making previews of the books available through the service (up to 20% of each book, IIRC), and after some tussling with author's groups, they also plan on providing links to websites and physical libraries where the books are available. Although it may sound convenient on the surface, Google's approach and intentions bring up a number of issues. The most apparent issue is that digital copies of authors works will be accessible (in however limited a form) in an online setting without their permission. Given Google's intent to provide book previews, it's of particular concern to authors of works that are piecemeal in nature (such as short stories, anthologies, poetry, art and photography books). But the larger concern is that Google's digitization process places an onus of responsibility on the authors instead of Google --- Google's approach has been to simply fully digitize every book ever made, and leave it up to the authors to contact Google within a certain time frame to opt out of having their books included in the service. Google's opinion was that not opting out of the service basically amounted to giving them permission to digitize the books. The problem, of course, is that Google hasn't made efforts to inform copyright holders that their books are even being digitized in the first place (especially an issue for rights-holders outside the U.S.), so Google's policy was seen as largely self-serving at the expense of authors' rights. A second issue regards their plan to make books with expired copyrights available for free download on their service, the concern being that it's largely in Google's best interest not to be overly rigorous in their screening process. Part of the concern draws from Google's historical ineffectiveness at properly filtering out piracy websites from their search results. The more over-arching concern, however, revolves around Google's motivating financial interests --- Google makes a majority of its revenues from their online advertising services such as Google AdSense and AdWords (IIRC, in 2010 they made $29 billion dollars in revenue, 97% of which was from advertising). Google has faced a lot of criticism in recent years for their financial ties to piracy, in that they do make revenue from advertising on and for piracy websites (I recall a conservative estimate amounting to roughly $500 million/year). Although Google offering free services such as Book Search may seem charitable on the surface, the primary motivation for providing such services is to expand their ad revenue channels, which in this case can be negatively affected by uncooperative authors (esp. of popular works) who choose to not be a part of the service. It paints Google to be in a position where aggressively protecting author's copyrights seems against their financial interest, and considering their intent is to provide easy access to books in an online format, that perception makes authors doubly hesitant to take part in the service. My opinion is that the Book Search is a nice idea that sounds convenient, but that Google's initial restraint in cooperating with copyright-holders and authors throws up a number of red flags as to how legitimately they plan on running the service. Considering that there's still on-going litigation regarding the service (AFAIK Authors Guild v. Google is in appeals right now) it's understandable that Kadokawa would be hesitant to take part in the library service. If I were in their shoes (or any author's shoes for that matter) I would hold out until Google demonstrates that it can run the service legitimately. There are a lot of resources and opinions out there on this topic, so I apologize if I've mis-interpreted or made any mistakes in correctly explaining the issues. |
|||
|
|||
Dessa
 Posts: 4438 |
|
||
|
This is pretty much the way I've understood it, too. I thought I'd heard rumors that there would be a pay service, too, where you could buy non-copyright-expired stuff, too, so they could compete with ebook retailers, but I don't remember.
Good on Kadokawa to be against this, I hope more manga companies follow suit. |
|||
|
|||
|
ConanSan
Posts: 1818 |
|
||
|
Oh look, I think I just ran out of shelf space.
|
|||
|
|||
|
anglicanotaku
Posts: 9 Location: Metro Atlanta |
|
||
|
It does appear that Google does include links to retailers for print and/or e-books (along with Google's own ebook store) for those books. Some books have no available preview, some have partial previews, and some are completely shown (those out of copyright, I'm assuming).
Interestingly enough, I'm currently reading I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 bu Douglas Edwards with his take on the early driving force of co-founders Larry Page and Sergy Brin -providing fastest most comprehensive search, expanding to providing access to as many sources of informational media as possible. Simply put they wanted to be the best, (if not only) goto site on the market in the world. I haven't finished the book, so I don't know when/if Edwards will explain how the shift in Google from information search to revenue generation came about (assuming it even did while during Edwards' tenure (he left in 2005) |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group