Tonight on pay-per-view: Google vs Literature

I found this article, which I think has some interesting implications.

The long and short of it is that the search engine Google wants to scan the entire contents of millions of books which will allow online users to search for text and be presented with a book listing and a sample page to read. Google is being sued for copyright infringement as they have already begun the task of scanning the books from several US libraries without asking for permission.

Google's web search is only possible through a philosophy that to ask for permission to scan every website would be impossible and they apply the same principle here. However, in a letter to USA Today, an incensed writer wrote: "I don't need to notify Google that they may not steal from me any more than I need to notify burglars that they do not have permission to rob my house or rapists that my body is off limits."

The ultimate contention of the above article is that books that cannot be searched for will never be found.

At present users can only read one or two pages from a book that they find on Google, so it is not a situation like music piracy in any sense. (Unless, of course, some clever hackers got their hands on the entire scans from the Google archives)

I wonder whether anything big will really come of this new development. Although I feel that having the search will be useful, and is a positive step in linking "old" media with "new" media, it will probably still never be better than the time old method of listening to word of mouth.

Books represent ideas, and ideas are best circulated by people talking about them. Take Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. What keywords could you use to find a book like that if you didn't already know what it was about?

Books that describe more abstract ideas, or philosophy, will probably just be as hard to find, even with the new search. My friend Jared has a book (which I can't remember the title of) which has eclectic chapters linked (I think) only really by an experimentation with the presentation of information and the ways form can alter content.

I think books will stubbornly resist the Internet for a while yet. They are a little bit like hidden treasures - there's not much like stumbling on a blurb that sounds fascinating. You still have to invest some time yourself to discover whether it was worth diving in. If the Internet is to be truly useful to people looking for books, it will still need people to write about the books and lay down lights for people looking for their treasures.

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So that's my first real post. Still looking for a sign off.

Try not to starve on my food for thought.