Cnet: Google Pauses Library Project.
All I can say is – let’s work this out, folks. This ain’t Napster. I know the book industry has issues with this, and they are significant, but man, they are completely shooting themselves in the foot if they don’t figure out how to leverage Google and search in general to sell down the long tail. Sheesh.
From what I read Google is not pausing the library project, only not scanning copyrighted material until November. There is plenty of Public Domain work available to keep them busy.
And it’s in the public domain books that the project’s real value lies. Everything printed in the U.S. before 1923 is fair game, and research shows that less than 10% of works published in the U.S. 1924-1976 had their copyright renewed. So the entire corpus of not only Western but most other civilizations should find their way into electronic form and onto the Web, whether or not the latest Tom Clancy, How-To-Get-Happy-By-Buying-My-Book, or Life for Dummies is included. I say to the visonaries at Google, “Full speed ahead!”
I don’t think this is ecer going to get resolved. Google also refers users to purchase many of the books listed in their search. This could have more of a positive impact than a negative impact for the publishers.