Waking up to Books in Richmond:
One of the irksome characteristics of the proposed Google Book Search settlement is the restricted access to the service at public libraries. Public libraries, we must recall, have long been public temples dedicated to equal access; that spirit is enshrined famously at the Boston Public Library -- "FREE TO ALL".The proposed settlement does set aside free public access for public libraries, but with severe limitations: 1) you must use a terminal physically inside the library, and 2) at present, there is a limit to one terminal per library building. The actual text is below.
4.8 Public Access Service.
(a) Public Access Service.(i) Free Public Access Service. Google may provide the Public Access Service to each not-for-profit Higher Education Institution and Public Library that so requests at no charge (and without any payment to the Rightsholders, through the Registry or otherwise (other than as set forth in Section 4.8(a)(ii) (Printing)) as follows:
...(3) in the case of each Public Library, no more than one terminal per Library Building.
...
(iii) Additional Public Access Service. The Registry and Google may agree that Google may make available the Public Access Service to one or more Public Libraries or not-for-profit Higher Education Institutions either for free or for an annual fee, in addition to the Public Access Service provided under Section 4.8(a)(i) (Free Public Access Service).
The wording suggests something more is possible; I suggest something more is mandatory.
I do not know where program management at Google wakes up every morning; I do not know what pretty suburbs publishing executives wake up in every morning. But I wake up every morning in the city of Richmond, CA. Richmond is a great city; a city famous for helping win the Second World War; it is in places a beautiful city, and it is a city with incredible promise. It is also a city of underprivileged populations. The reasons for this particular social geography are many, and deeply embedded in historical contexts. But in Richmond, and in many cities around the country, it is heinous to suppose that one public terminal given free reign to the corpus of the world's literature is an adequate set aside against the promise of the opportunity that Google, publishers, and authors have made possible.
Let the population of Greenwich CT and Los Altos CA have their single terminal per library building; they may, by and large, retreat to their homes with high speed internet access, and their schools may very well wind up acquiring their own subscriptions to GBS.
But there will be no deleterious market impact of an expansion of free public access if it was offered in Richmond. Many of my city's fellow residents have NO internet access at home, NO (or exceedingly limited) internet access at school. You -- Google, publishers, authors -- have an incredible opportunity to facilitate learning, reading, questioning.
This is not an economic matter; it is a social foundation. A library is a refuge; you can provide solace in that refuge, and a promise for a different and better kind of future. It is morally incumbent upon you to do so.
I propose that public terminals be accessible on a tiered basis. If a certain percentage of a public library's served population falls beneath the poverty level or a similar metric, the number of public access terminals is commensurately increased.
At public libraries, internet access is a priority; so is access to information. Help them fulfill that promise to those most in need.
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