Google’s plans for a virtual library of millions of digital books has sparked competing efforts by Microsoft, Yahoo! and Amazon, whose less ambitious plans could avoid infuriating copyright holders who have attacked Google.
Google Print, which scans books and makes their texts available online for keyword searches, was launched this month with what the California company called only “a small fraction” of the 15-million titles it eventually hopes to digitally copy.
Even before the launch, Yahoo! and Microsoft, Google’s main rivals on the internet, announced separate plans to digitise books into online libraries.
But Microsoft’s and Yahoo!’s virtual libraries are expected to be smaller, limited to only works in the public domain — those without current copyrights.
While Google Print‘s initial collection is only public-domain works, it has also been scanning copyrighted works, angering many authors and publishers who have accused the company of seeking to trample on copyrights for its own financial gain.
Google has been giving publishers and authors the right to “opt out” of having their works included in the online library, but the company still faces legal challenges over copyrights.
Meanwhile, online retail giant Amazon.com has already challenged Google with its announcement this month of a different digital library model: one that allows consumers to purchase “online access” to books or to “any page, section, or chapter” of a book.
Copyright holders would get a part of the receipts earned by the new service, Amazon Pages.
The Amazon Pages formula was welcomed by the publishing world as a solution to the dilemma over copyrights, similar to the battle over digital music that worked its way through the courts in recent years.
“A number of models will be tried and we’ll try to help and be a voice in the debate of what the consumers wants and at what price,” said John Sargent, chief executive of Holtzbrinck Publishers, a unit of Germany’s Verlagsgruppe.
One publisher, Bertelsmann unit Random House, has suggested a formula along the lines of the Apple iTunes model, which allows consumers to download copyrighted music for 99c a song.
Random House said that charging 99c for 20 pages of a book “could represent an attractive introductory consumer offer”.
“The book industry has to find its equivalent of iTunes, and maybe this is a step in that direction,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, which has sued Google.
Google’s digital library has its supporters, however, who argue that the online library would be more like a “card catalog” that stimulates even more interest in books.
“The purpose of Google Print is not making books available for free; there’s a lot of confusion,” said Rebecca Jeschke, spokesperson at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an activist group that is backing Google in the courts.
“Google wants to create a way to access books which would help both users and publishers.”
Analysts say that whatever the fate of these projects, there is little danger of digital books replacing the ones on people’s shelves.
Patti Freeman Evans at Jupiter Research said people are likely to use digital books only for “small snippets” of a work.
The concept “seems to make sense for people in the research or academic communities who want only excerpts of books, more than for people who are reading Harry Potter,” she said.
“It’s not as easy to take one section out of it and to take value, as it is for a CD. Pulling out one chapter of a story — it may not stand alone, which is different from a hit single in music.”
Reading online, Evans added, is less attractive and “doesn’t present the same flexibility as having a physical book”. – AFP