Robert Darnton has written a long and interesting article about the Google books class action at the New York Review of Books, entitled Google and the Future of Books.
In the article, Darnton begins by describing a mythologised but historically extant “Republic of Letters” – the Enlightenment, if you like – inhabited by men like Voltaire and Rousseau, Jefferson and Madison. This Republic wasn’t always a wonderful thing, confined as it was to those rich and educated enough to gain entry, but it none-the-less represented a vision of free-and-frank intellectual exchange and discussion which has endured:
One way to understand this system is to draw on the sociology of knowledge, notably Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of literature as a power field composed of contending positions within the rules of a game that itself is subordinate to the dominating forces of society at large. But one needn’t subscribe to Bourdieu’s school of sociology in order to acknowledge the connections between literature and power. Seen from the perspective of the players, the realities of literary life contradicted the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment. Despite its principles, the Republic of Letters, as it actually operated, was a closed world, inaccessible to the underprivileged. Yet I want to invoke the Enlightenment in an argument for openness in general and for open access in particular.
Darnton argues there is a similar tension between the principles of free access and open information embodied by many libraries and educational institutions, and the money and power at stake in the information they generate, distribute and control. He points out that copyright is specifically set down in Article I of the United States Constitution ‘”for limited times” only and subject to the higher purpose of promoting “the progress of science and useful arts.”‘ In the 1780s this meant a 14 year term with one extension. Now, of course, copyright has lengthened to 70 years after the death of the author – which in practice means more than a century.This long and interesting article is in many ways an elaboration and commentary on Lawrence Lessig’s work, but contains many fascinating observations of the contentious interface between the public and private spheres of knowledge. For instance, did you know that relatively obscure journals charge tens of thousands of dollars to public and university libraries?
… the Journal of Comparative Neurology now costs $25,910 for a year’s subscription; Tetrahedron costs $17,969 (or $39,739, if bundled with related publications as a Tetrahedron package); the average price of a chemistry journal is $3,490; and the ripple effects have damaged intellectual life throughout the world of learning. Owing to the skyrocketing cost of serials, libraries that used to spend 50 percent of their acquisitions budget on monographs now spend 25 percent or less. University presses, which depend on sales to libraries, cannot cover their costs by publishing monographs. And young scholars who depend on publishing to advance their careers are now in danger of perishing.
But now, of course, one corporation is changing that business model: Google, with its ground-breaking settlement known simply as the Google Book Settlement. Although there has been some in depth commentary on this topic – most notably from Siva Vaidhyanathan – there has been surprisingly little attention paid to it in cultural and economics circles. When Darnton takes the time to read through the entire 134 page settlement, he is dumbfounded by the scale of the settlement:
… here is a proposal that could result in the world’s largest library. It would, to be sure, be a digital library, but it could dwarf the Library of Congress and all the national libraries of Europe. Moreover, in pursuing the terms of the settlement with the authors and publishers, Google could also become the world’s largest book business—not a chain of stores but an electronic supply service that could out-Amazon Amazon.
The problem, Darnton realises, is that Google is not just creating the world’s largest library: it is also creating the world’s largest research infrastructure monopoly, one controlled in the end by the board of a for-profit corporation – for good or evil.The money quote in Darnton’s article is this, which makes you realise the scale of the opportunities missed by the 1990’s IP gold-rush:
Looking back over the course of digitization from the 1990s, we now can see that we missed a great opportunity. Action by Congress and the Library of Congress or a grand alliance of research libraries supported by a coalition of foundations could have done the job at a feasible cost and designed it in a manner that would have put the public interest first. By spreading the cost in various ways—a rental based on the amount of use of a database or a budget line in the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Library of Congress—we could have provided authors and publishers with a legitimate income, while maintaining an open access repository or one in which access was based on reasonable fees. We could have created a National Digital Library—the twenty-first-century equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. It is too late now. Not only have we failed to realize that possibility, but, even worse, we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit.
Perhaps even more saliently, a similar situation exists for many common genetic traits and diseases.
The title of this post, by the way, comes from a blog by Siva Vaidhyanathan – the author of The Anarchist in the Library
Devil’s advocate. Why would a LoC-controlled digitised uberlibrary be significantly less bad than the Google one? It’d be just as corporatised and imperial.
Somebody placed like the brilliant Professor Darnton may not fully appreciate what a boon it is for people in far-flung isolated places to have access to the insides of books through Google. The difference it is making to students in regional & distance education, for instance, is startling. I can sort of agree that maybe it would have been better if the UN had been in charge, but the potentially compromised reality of access through Google is better than
imaginary perfect access.
And given that the digitised books are still (for now) physically on the shelves where they’ve always been, it’s a little hyperbolic to call what Google is doing controlling (I take this to mean restricting) access to information.
Good post Ben, I read that article last week, and agreed with both the conclusions, and the general framing.
This said, I don’t think it’s too late for this. Things are changing; creative commons is growing, open source is becoming not just a competitor, but in some areas actually the leading solution.
Google certainly has done this with the motive of making profit, however I would add the caveat that google is trying to make value, by generating value for users. As opposed to a much of the old guard, which is focussed on restricting value, does that make sense?
Laura, Darnton goes to some lengths to makes the point that the Google settlement is not all bad. For instance, it mandates at least one PC with full access to Google Books in every public library in the US.
And Patrickg, I agree that Google is probably adding value in the true sense of making something more valuable and useful than it once was – for instance, a book that is in copyright but out of print. But I don’t think it’s stretching the point to say Google is controlling the information. Even if the monopoly it builds might ultimately help many researchers, Google will still control it. Microsoft, you might remember, made similar arguments in its anti-trus suits about how the natural monopoly of Windows actually helped users y giving everyone a common platform. European Union judges and Linux users found that argument rather frail.
Well I’m afraid I find quite a lot of Darnton’s assumptions about free access within existing systems keen to ignore economic realities. He mentions the outrageous charges demanded by some academic journals, but books & journals and access to them has always had a cost, either to the individual or the institution that may hold them. He can dis Bourdieu but the republic of knowledge has always been a murky place where profit motive and access to knowledge have uneasily co-existed.
We should be concerned about knowledge being centralised, but there are three issues that Darnton doesn’t mention that I think also important.
Firstly, as has occurred in so many other areas of modern commerce, part of the production cost of an item has been cleverly transferred to the user. After paying a copyright fee, you still have to print the thing out. The cost of paper & ink from your average printer would probably cost you for a copy of Middlemarch than as a Penguin classic.
Secondly, we are already seeing a rise in the self-published book, but also a withdrawal of competent editorialisation of commercial texts. I have sitting on my shelf an academic title from a major European publisher on computational linguistics where significant chunks of the text have been transposed. It is not a printing error, it is a howling editorial error. Or more probably, a lack of editorial practice. Editorial standards and practices exist to facilitate the transference of knowledge, following established protocols. They are disappearing, very rapidly. More & more academic publishers are moving to digital production of books only, largely for cost efficiencies and one of the first casualties are editorial standards. I see this as analogous to Big Pharma’s huge spending in marketing & stuff all in testing & research.
And lastly, all of this assumes access to the internet at reasonable speeds & cost. Which is simply not the case for the majority of people, both here & internationally, second & third world alike. Even in regional Australia, many struggle with dial-up. As this ABS report shows, as of 2006 63% of dwellings had internet access, but quite who reveals very significant levels of inequitable access. And public libraries simply cannot fill that gap, as under-funded as they are, they are already struggling to meet current demand.
Bernice, all good points – although you can of course choose to read Middlemarch on your screen
Liseusen (Kindle, iLiad etc) are also rapidly spreading, and the display technology to allow reading at low power in a range of environments is rapidly developing. I suspect that within 5 years the netbook/OLPC devices we have now will be paperback sized with weeks of battery life when used to read text.
Wander into Dymocks and try reading on an iLiad if you doubt ever being able to use an electronic device for reading. It’s quite a different experience from backlit LCD screens.
Laura: “Somebody placed like the brilliant Professor Darnton may not fully appreciate what a boon it is for people in far-flung isolated places to have access to the insides of books through Google.”
Google’s just as good and probably better as anyone else. The argument is mostly about copying and the settlement gives Google a practical monopoly on “fair use” copying and commercial use for all printed books and childrens’ book illustrations published in the United States.
If someone else wants to make digital copies of books from a library, US law says it’s no longer fair use so google competitors are obliged to try and negotiate their own deal with the Authors and the Publishers.
There will be two copies hosted elsewhere and made available as “The Research Corpus” but access is available only to “qualified users” who are researchers working in computational text analysis (eg google staff).
This is a US-only agreement and I’m not sure if google can give access to the corpus outside of the geographies covered by the US publishing agreements. Even so, I’m uncomfortable with an agreement of such scope being a private arrangement between such powerful players. Commercial entities look to their own commercial interests. I can’t avoid the feeling there should be a bit of statute or common law about this. Statutory licences maybe?
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Laura included: “The difference it is making to students in regional & distance education, for instance, is startling. ”
Hear, hear! Up until recently, lecturers had to organise printed “readers” of articles, chapters [subject to a 10% maximum restriction], etc to send out to their distance students. This can still be done as a back-up, but now students may read the WHOLE damn book, if they wish.
Distance education suits so many rural and regional folk and can serve them well.
My concern with Google Books is that Google seems to be applying their usual autistic nerd hyperfocus to the wrong aspect: getting the books scanned in bulk, with a complete disregard for little things like, well, whether the books were scanned correctly or not.
“Up until recently, lecturers had to organise printed “readers” of articles, chapters [subject to a 10% maximum restriction], etc to send out to their distance students.”
For myself, I *vastly* prefer having a bound and printed copy of readings *and* lecture notes. I’m completing an MBA through USQ distance ed and did one course “online” were it all came on a CD. Never again.
“This can still be done as a back-up, but now students may read the WHOLE damn book, if they wish.”
If and only if they or their Library rents the book from google.
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My experience re remote students using Google Books is this – these students can order books from the main campus library to be sent to their branch campus. they can only have a small number of books at a time and it takes 2-3 days for the books to get there. Before Google Books they had to rely on the minimal info in the library catalogue to work out whether the book they were ordering would be of any use or not. Now they have the opportunity to browse the book online – look at the index, scan a few pages – in much the same way central campus students can browse books on the shelves before borrowing.
We’re seeing fewer and fewer assignments which use totally unsuitable books as secondary material, and it’s directly attributable to Google books.
I agree Darryl Rosin.
It’s better to have the study guides and readings in printed form.
At the university I’m most familiar with, remote access to books is not through Google Books: it’s through the university Library catalogue on-line. The uni has paid the publisher of that book, to have it available as an e-book, including (e.g.) downloadable chapters in pdf.
I meant the availability of “supplementary readings”, NOT the basics such as study guides or lecture notes or essential readings.