Well, it’s happened.  The Association of American Publishers (AAP) have finally filed a lawsuit against Google their plans to build a Google Print Library Project.  Since Google decided to make this an“opt out” system then maybe they will see this as a “bulk opt out” by some of the biggest player.  As someone who has been an author for three of these publishers I for one am glad to see that this is finally being challenged in the courts.

The suit has been filed on behalf of five major publisher members of AAP:

• The McGraw-Hill Companies
• Pearson Education
• Penguin Group (USA)
• Simon & Schuster
• John Wiley & Sons

Is this a fear reaction? I don't think so. It's an issue of principal and of copyright enforcement and it's odd to live in a world where music and movies get huge levels of protections while print is supposed to give in and accept infringements.

I hope that Google now finally take this as an indication of how the publishing industry feel about this gross violation of intellectual property.  The motto of “Do no evil” is starting to wear thin. You've gone too far with this and starting to look suss.

I've always said that if they could get away with this I'm in the wrong business and would start uploading books, music and movies to the web and giving people access to "portions" of the works and declaring it all as "fair use".

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Technorati Tags: Google Print, Google

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 17:50 and is filed under Book Talk!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.