{"id":4524,"date":"2011-09-20T11:52:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T16:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=4524"},"modified":"2011-10-03T09:33:23","modified_gmt":"2011-10-03T14:33:23","slug":"google-causes-loss-of-books-turns-society-into-man-eating-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/software\/google-causes-loss-of-books-turns-society-into-man-eating-whales\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Causes Loss Of Books, Turns Society Into Man-eating Whales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh Google, come on. I have to say, I\u2019m a bit disappointed in your behavior. I know it\u2019s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission, but I have a hard time picturing a group of Google executives sitting in a meeting and saying, \u201cWe\u2019ll just do it, and see if they notice\u201d, which is what it looks like they did regarding their plan to make a digital library. When Google created Google Books<\/a>, they were quickly slapped with a lawsuit that\u2019s been in negotiations since its creations in 2005. Big fat DUH, Google. With all the trouble my teachers went through to make sure I didn\u2019t plagiarize or copy information out of books or websites for my papers, it\u2019s strange that Google thinks it would be okay to just upload millions and millions of books without telling the authors. It’s hard to imagine this free digital library not having some sort of monetary effect on the writers and publishing companies, not to mention they have even less knowledge of who gets their material and how. Plus, there’s the general lack of R-E-S-P-E-C-T in this situation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ms. Aretha disapproves of you, Google<\/p><\/div>\n

From what I understand, it comes down to Google assuming it was okay to scan and upload 15 million (out of a goal total of 130 million) books to a digital library without getting permission from any of the authors. Google decided they would upload any books they wanted to, unless they were informed by an author or publisher that they couldn\u2019t upload a specific work. I found no information on how Google informed publishing companies they were uploading their books or if they even tried to inform them at all. Either way, it\u2019s an inappropriately bold move.<\/p>\n

Books are going away. In 100 years, getting your hands on a hard copy of a book is going to be a rare occurrence. It can become as rare and special as it was when books were first created and monks spent entire lifetimes duplicating them. As wonderful as the creation of the Nook<\/a> and the Kindle<\/a> was, it made it easy for our society to not need hard copies of anything anymore. Were something to happen that removed our access to the invisible volt of information floating around in cyber space that holds all our world\u2019s history and literature, I think we would kick ourselves for not having hard copies ready. I also hate to think of what the society that follows us will assume about our life based on what they find. They may find one sad copy of Moby Dick<\/em> that survived in the New York Museum of Informative Relics and Touchable Information. Future humans may then think we were a society of asshole whale-killing captains and huge, man-eating whales. And then they\u2019ll be like \u201cwhat the hell is a whale?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

"It's a giant, raging metaphor!"<\/p><\/div>\n

Anyway, this lawsuit has been going on for nearly seven years now and the Google attorney, Daralyn Durie, feels they have recently made strong progress toward finding a solution. Despite how obvious and ridiculous this situation is, both sides seem willing to work together to find a good solution to this problem, which was inevitable and a long time coming giving the amount of binary we use nowadays. Even though Google went about creating their library poorly, it\u2019s hard to deny the value in putting all our literature online. A digital library would make books more available to less privileged families, entire populations of people, and students, and I\u2019m pro that. But I think there\u2019s more mature and diplomatic ways to go about doing it. As a writer myself, I too would want more information and control over my work. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who presides over this case, recently told the Associated Press, \u201cmany of the objections would disappear if the library only consisted of works in which authors and publishers had granted their permission rather than a system in which books are included unless Google is informed that an author or publisher objects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, I feel the need to say this: duh, Google. No more beer during Friday\u2019s meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh Google, come on. I have to say, I\u2019m a bit disappointed in your behavior. I know it\u2019s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission, but I have a hard time picturing a group of Google executives sitting in a meeting and saying, \u201cWe\u2019ll just do it, and see if they notice\u201d, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,45,908,38,40],"tags":[1347,1349,1348,74,598,472,1009,1346,471],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4524"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4531,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4524\/revisions\/4531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}