[Overview]
In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a
project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able to see
excerpts from their books and order them online. In December 2004,
Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project intended
for libraries, to build up a world digital library by digitizing the
collections of main partner libraries. The beta version of Google Print
went live in May 2005. In August 2005, Google Print was stopped until
further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of authors and
publishers for copyright infringement. The program resumed in August
2006 under the new name of Google Books. Google Books has offered books
digitized in the participating libraries (Harvard, Stanford, Michigan,
Oxford, California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, Complutense of Madrid
and New York Public Library), with either the full text for public
domain books or excerpts for copyrighted books. The lawsuit with
associations of authors and publishers was settled in October 2008.
[In Depth (published in 2008)]
In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a
project aimed at publishers, for users to be able to see snippets of
their books and order them online. The beta version of Google Print
went on line in May 2005. In December 2004, Google launched the second
part of Google Print as a project intended for libraries, to build up a
digital library of 15 million books by scanning and digitizing the
collections of main libraries, beginning with the Universities of
Michigan (7 million books), Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, and the New
York Public Library. The planned cost was an average of US $10 per
book, and $150 to $200 million on ten years. In August 2005, Google
Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by
publishers for copyright infringement. The program resumed in August
2006 under the new name of Google Books.
Google Books was launched in August 2006 to replace the controversial
Google Print, stopped in August 2005 because of main copyright
concerns. Google Books offers excerpts of books digitized by Google in
the participating libraries (Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford,
California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, Complutense of Madrid and New
York Public Library). Google scans 3,000 books a day, including
copyrighted books. The inclusion of copyrighted books is widely
criticized by authors and publishers worldwide. In the US, lawsuits
were filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American
Publishers (AAP) for alleged copyright infringement. The assumption is
that the full scanning and digitizing of copyrighted books infringes
copyright laws, even if only snippets are made freely available on the
search engine. To counteract copyright concerns and the problems of a
closed platform, the Internet Archive launched the Open Content
Alliance (OCA) with the goal of digitizing only public domain books and
make them searchable and downloadable through any search engine.