I haven’t gotten around to listening to the NPR segment referenced in this post, but Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing points out that Google has stated in writing that none of the contracts they have with libraries to scan their collections are exclusive, meaning the libraries are free to work with other partners and/or work on their own digitization projects. He does lament the fact that Google still won’t release their scans of public domain works to the public domain:
“It just doesn’t seem like Google, betting against the Internet’s creativity and capacity to innovate. I know they’ve got a lot of smart people there, but I hope they understand that they don’t have all the smart people. Google makes the bulk of its money by indexing the cool stuff other people make. Why restrict people from making more cool stuff?”
Technorati Tags: Google, Books, Libraries, Public_Domain