Editorial: Google Deal or Rip-Off?

One public access terminal per public library building. Institutional database subscriptions for academic and public libraries that secure once freely available material in a contractual lockbox, which librarians already know too well from costly e-journal and e-reference database deals. No remote access for public libraries without approval from the publisher/author Book Rights Registry, set up to administer the program. And no copying or pasting from that institutional database, though you can print pages for a fee. Of course, you can always purchase the book, too.

Those are just a few of the choice tidbits from the 200-page settlement in the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Authors Guild three-year-old suit against Google, drawn from Jonathan Band's “Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement.” Band's report was commissioned by the American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries.

Clearly, the public had little standing in the negotiations that led to the recent agreement in the class-action lawsuit against Google for scanning books from library shelves. An author friend, a strong advocate of public libraries though not a current user of them, naïvely wondered how could this happen. Well, the suit was never about the public interest but about corporate interests, and librarians did not have much power at the bargaining table, no matter how hard those consulted pushed. While there are many provisions in the document that specify what libraries can and can't do and portend greater access, ultimately, it is the restrictions that scream out at us from the miasma of details.

Even the libraries that were initial partners (or those that become partners) in the Google scan plan don't fare well. They get a single digital copy of each book from their collection—mind you, they've paid for these books already—and can print a replacement copy only if a new copy isn't available at a “fair price.” They can allow faculty and students to “read, print, download, or otherwise use five pages of any book in its LDC” (library digital copy set) for books “not commercially available,” but they can't use the LDC for interlibrary loan or e-reserves. There are all kinds of potentially costly, nightmarish administrative minutiae, including a security plan and annual audits of usage and security.

The restrictions were obviously too much for one of the original five Google partners, Harvard University Library (HUL), which criticized the settlement. Robert Darnton, the HUL director, said the deal had “too many potential limitations on access to and use of books” for academia and public libraries and questioned what the price for access would be, given that “the subscription service will have no real competitors.”

Despite these concerns and others—for instance, the quality of the Google scans—many agree with LJ's Andrew Albanese (who broke the news of an imminent “blanket license agreement” settlement in LJ Academic Newswire in early October) that the Google deal offers an unparalleled opportunity to increase exponentially the scanning of books and use of them. Nevertheless, as Albanese pointed out in LJAN (10/30/08), while Google held itself up as the champion of fair use when the publishers sued, in the end, “it has…universally licensed a medium that has contained the whole of human history for $125 million—pocket change to the well-capitalized search giant.”

Obviously, books are moving online, but librarians need to ensure that the principles of borrowing and sharing are expanded in a digital world, not circumscribed by contract law or available only to those who can pay. We have no guarantee that Google will support its book database indefinitely. Librarians, and everyone else in this country, know all too well the folly of leaving the future to the marketplace. Some have suggested that libraries eschew institutional “rental” subscriptions that allow only restricted access from Google and instead invest those funds in their own scans, ultimately creating, and owning for the public, a database based on fair use. That could leave libraries open to publisher lawsuits. Nevertheless, librarians must do better than to acquiesce in an arrangement that relinquishes ownership of books online in favor of contractual provisions and for-pay schemes that subvert the ideals of the public library and academic inquiry.