This Google/AAP settlement has hit my brain like a steel ball in a pinball machine, careening around and setting off bells and lights in all directions. In other words, where do I start?Reading the FAQ (not the full 140 page document), it seems to go like this:
Google makes a copy of a book.
Google lets people search on words in the book.
Google lets people pay to see the book, perhaps buy the book, with some money going to the rights holder.
Google manages all of this with a registry of rights.Now, replace the word "Google" above with "Kinko's."
Next, replace the word "Google" above with "A library."
TILT! If Google is allowed to do this, shouldn't anyone be allowed to do it? Is Jeff Bezos kicking himself right now for playing by the rules? Did Google win by going ahead and doing what no one else dared to do? Can they, like Microsoft, flaunt the law because they can buy their way out of any legal pickle?
Ping! Next thought: we already have vendors of e-books who provide this service for libraries. They serve up digital, encoded versions of the books, not scans of pages. These digital books often have some very useful features, such as allowing the user to make notes, copy quotes of a certain length, create bookmarks, etc. The current Google Books offering is very feature poor. Also, because it is based on scans, there is no flowing of pages to fit the screen. The OCR is too poor to be useful to the sight-impaired. And if they sell books, what will the format be?
TILT! Will it even be legal for a publicly-funded library to provide Google books if they aren't ADA compliant?