[Web4lib] Consumer Group Raises Concerns about Google Print Library

[Chuck0]

NCL wrote:
> "In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary
> subcommittees overseeing intellectual property issues, the nation's
> oldest consumer advocacy group...warned...that the project, which will
> resume scanning on November 1, 2005 poses dramatic threats to the
> principle of copyrights; fairness to authors; and cultural selectivity,
> exclusion, and censorship."

While I have plenty of reservations about a big corporation and its plan 
to become "the Internet," I see anything that dissolves intellectual 
property and moves our society to the eventual abolition of IP as a good 
thing. The National Consumers League is misguided and misinformed when 
it states that Google Print will hurt consumers and authors. Projects 
like Google Print can only help "consumers" by making available more 
intelelctual content online, in the same way a big public library makes 
a wealth of material availabe to the community. Authors and musicians 
have been sold a pack of lies about how file-sharing and having their 
content online will "hurt" them. Artists and authors benefit by an 
increase in the exposure of their works. Band XYZ is West Bumblefish, 
Montana would have been limited to a small network of fans prior to the 
Internet if the music industry had decided that they weren't "hot". Now, 
any band with the resources and time can reach large numbers of fans via 
the Internet and file sharing.

Authors will benefit from projects like Google Print, because it will 
open the backlist of publishers up to public discovery. The publishing 
industry has actually been helped by online services such as Ebay and 
Amazon.com, which has increased the trade in used books and older editions.

Lastly, intellectual property is bad for authors and consumers in that 
it restrains the free flow of ideas. As any artist or musician should 
know, art is always about borrowing. Rarely is something truly original. 
Musicians always talk about "their influences." The current IP regime is 
showing how it restricts the free flow of ideas.

Let's get rid of it.

Chuck
Infoshop.org