Darknet

Scanning a million books page by page for Google

Associated Press: Scanning a million books page by page for Google.

Rip this book? Not yet

Steve Levy in Newsweek:  Rip This Book? Not Yet. The very existence of a book scanner for consumer use is one of those early warnings of turbulence to come.

Libraries shun deals to place books on Web

I had lunch today with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, and he was a bit gleeful about today's front-page story in the New York Times: Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web.

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available. Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.

As it should be, and why Brewster and his colleagues are right to feel proud at standing up to the restrictions imposed by the tech giants.

Free downloads of books at Google

AP:

Google Inc. on Wednesday plans to begin letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain.

Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's "Inferno" and Aesop's "Fables" will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.

Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers

Information World Review: Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers. Software giant begins book digitisation, but side-steps copyright problems.

E-book project to offer free access

Associated Press: E-book project to offer free access.

Electronic book devotees may want to set aside some extra screen time this summer, as two non-profits are preparing to provide free access to 300,000 texts online.

Project Gutenberg and World eBook Library plan to make ``a third of a million'' e-books available free for a month at the first World eBook Fair. Downloads will be available at the fair's Web site from July 4, the 35th anniversary of Project Gutenberg's founding, through Aug. 4.

The majority of the books will be contributed by the World eBook Library. It otherwise charges $8.95 a year for access to its database of more than 250,000 e-books, documents and articles.

But the book fair won't be the last chance for e-bookworms to devour works ranging from ``Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' to ``Old Indian Legends,'' not to mention dictionaries and thesauruses, without paying for them.

Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart said the partners are on track to make 1 million books available for the annual fair's one-month run in 2009, with more appearing in subsequent years. About 100,000, he said, will be permanently available at the handful of Project Gutenberg sites on the Internet.

``We want to give the most books to the most people,'' Hart said. ``It has been our goal since the dawn of the Internet to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy.''

The Gutenberg books, typed and scanned into computers by thousands of volunteers, mostly are those that are no longer protected by copyright. They include fiction, non-fiction and reference books and will be available for worldwide readers in about 100 languages.

While the commercial e-book market remains tiny, Hart said electronic books have ``caught on without getting a lot of publicity'' and are being widely read on handheld computers, cell phones and even special programs for use on iPods.

``These people that grew up on GameBoys -- to them a GameBoy screen is the standard size,'' he said. ``To us old folks, it's too small. But they don't care.''

Based on fast-increasing demand, he predicted there will be 10 million e-books available by 2020.

``I've gotten notes from people who said they would have never, ever read Shakespeare if I hadn't put it on the Internet,'' Hart said.

Amazon book pages: not built for authors

I visited the Darknet page on Amazon.com for the first time in a couple of months. I've got to say that the format of these pages bothers me quite a bit. You have reviewers who obviously haven't read the book -- like the latest scribe, Arnaud "Arnaud" of Venice, CA -- make wildly false statements, eg, that "the book encourages file sharing" and the book is anti-artist. Nothing could be further from the truth, as anyone who has read "Darknet" knows.

As a blogger, it's frustrating to me that there is no opportunity for the author to respond on my own book page.

Google to put books online

Missed this news in the San Jose Mercury News the other day: Google to put books online. Complete works to be available, for a fee, in digital form only.

Google is expanding its role in the publishing world from a search engine for books to a distributor making entire books available to read online.

The company launched a new program Friday that allows traditional book publishers in the United States and Britain to sell and set the price for access to full copies of their books, Google spokeswoman Megan Lamb said Monday. Consumers who purchase the access cannot save copies of the books or individual pages to their computers and can view them only through a Web browser.

``We are collaborating with publishers -- in response to demand from them -- to develop a suite of online tools that will enable publishers to experiment with new and innovative ways to generate more book revenue,'' Lamb said in an e-mail.

The new program is open only to U.S. and U.K. publishers at this point.

Several points remained unclear: whether Google would get a cut of the price paid for access to a book; whether customers who purchase access to books see advertising while they read the books; and whether independent authors will also one day sell full access to their books through the service. ...

The Anti-Lessig wiki

Mark Hamilton, who recently redesigned his notes from a teacher blog:

Lawrence Lessig, whose book Free Culture should be on your must-read list, has taken a bold step forward: the Anti-Lessig Reader. His introduction to the new wiki:

The aim of this page is to build a collection of content that criticizes my work. I’ve mapped the chapters of Free Culture, but feel free to add any other work you’d like. Also, if there is stuff that adds support, of course that can be added. But please keep it separate from the criticism. My aim is to create a simple source for “the other side of the story.”

I love it: read the book, then log in, start writing and join the discussion. Brilliant.

Is Google Book Search fair use?

Larry Lessig does one of his famous slide shows, this time on YouTube: Is Google Book Search fair use?