Letters to the Editor
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Digital Highwayman
The example of the benefits of the Google system given in Mr. Manjoo's article is totally farfetched: an obscure reference giving exactly the fact one needs, one otherwise unavailable. This is possible but certainly a rare event in most of our lives. The reality Google wants to offer, he indicates, is quite different: the texts of Lolita, the great Gatsby. and other books still under copyright, some of them still selling. Though it poses as a knight of literacy, by digitizing libraries, scanning copyrighted books and offering them online, Google is simply a highwayman, ripping off the coyright owner. The result will be to drive down the value of content, since the rewards of creating it will be lessened, and hence possibly its quality also. We will not see the gems for the dreck.
Google already scans an enormous digital library, namely the global web content it normally searches. Content thus accessed, however, can be protected by the website owner That is not the case with libraries, which are mere repositories of material. It is true that no one knows the copyright status of all the books in the library, but the status of most books can be determined.
One wonders how far Google will get when it decides it has the rights to scan the Barnes and Noble catalog as well.
Cliff Barney