Google's monopoly of digitized books is still raising concerns from publishing industry insiders, as well as those watching from the virtual wings.
Most recently, librarians have asked the judge in the Google Book Settlement case to order strict oversight of the program and make sure Google doesn't charge exorbitant fees to access digitized tomes. The New York Times sums up concerns raised by the American Library Association and two other groups:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation – the ACLU of the net – says it is working with authors who oppose the Google deal, which is supported by the Association of American Publishers and Author's Guide.
The found of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, criticized the settlement and the publishing industry's lack of focus for the future. Here are some of Kahle's comments, as reported at InternetNews.com:
“It creates another monopoly,” said Kahle. “It doesn’t make sense for them to be locked up by Google, it’s very screwy.”
Going forward he warned the settlement might “determine the future of books and paid content.”
In response to a question, Kahle, a successful entrepreneur, took
pains to say he’s not about making everything free. He thinks the
publishing industry needs a new distribution system that would enable
the “vending and lending” of online works.
He said he wants to be optimistic a new system will emerge, but so
far “fhe book publishing industry has done almost everything it can to
kill itself.”
More on the Web:
The Google Book Search fiasco makes me all kinds of mad. While we can request that our books not be shown in their database, it's still some nerve of the company to make illegal scans of our work from loaned library books.