Sergey Brin Blows Smoke Up Your Ass | Hacker News Reader

Sergey Brin Blows Smoke Up Your Ass

thebigmoney.com

I like how the article goes from implying that these books were already easy enough to access ("...that would otherwise rot in such obscure libraries as Harvard, Oxford, and the University of California...") to complaining that Google will have an effective monopoly on making these books available ("...a deliberate attempt to sucker the public into letting Google have a monopoly on millions of digitally archived books."), mixed in with some snide remarks implying that the books being scanned probably aren't worth much anyway ("We're sure graduate students everywhere will thrill to the prospect of reading first drafts of Henry Miller erotica or something.").

So basically, Google is wrong for having exclusive rights to books, except that anyone can go look at them anyway, and it's bad because they'll be the gatekeeper of knowledge that isn't worth much.

Wait, what?

This article manages from start to finish to be as obnoxious as its title. Even if it actually made the big argument that it's vaunting, but somehow never gets around to spelling out, it would still be vile. I don't want to ever read anything by this person.

Guy is whining that Google dared to clear up some of the mess of book copyright that was hurting human knowledge preservation and dissemination. He thinks that since Google is rich and can spend money on what they want then whatever they achieve is cheating. He perceives that any endeavor Google decides to spend their money on indicates a precious market that they want to monopolize. He somehow not manages to take into account that before Google took its shot it was a messy desert.

To paraphrase Nancy Kress, question is not who should be the repository of such public trust as knowledge. Question is who can be. And it seems that Google is first to stand up to this task.

What if a company gained a monopoly through pure goodness?

Do people have the right to persecute them for simply being a "potential" threat even though they did nothing wrong?

I think it depends upon what that company does with their monopoly. E.g. Microsoft basically has a monopoly in the OS market, which was fine until they unfairly used that advantage to put Netscape out of business. Now they are in trouble with the EU, etc.

But I don't believe this would create a monopoly. My understanding is that the settlement does not stop any other company from going out and scanning the same books. In fact, due to the settlement, I believe it would be far easier for a second company to embark upon the same endeavor since Google will be setting a precedent for many of the legal issues involved. Without the settlement, no one would have access to these books because in many cases it is impossible to track down the rights holders. All in all, I think this settlement does a lot of good for the public.

Netscape was actually killed by apache. Netscape doesn't make its money in the browser market, but actually in the server market.

Note, this is from heard-so. So it might be false. Nonetheless, it is an intruging idea that open source competitors are actually silent killers of proprietary software companies. Kinda make you wants to examine history to see who is really the true players and the true good guys and bad guys of civilization.

Netscape started out selling its browser. People bought it because it was significantly better than the free alternative at the time (Mosaic). Then Microsoft came out with Internet Explorer, which was good enough to challenge Navigator, and was distributed for free.

I am not actually suggesting that microsoft didn't beat netscape in the browser market but that the apache project is the competitor that finally killed off netscape's last supply of oxygen. Think of apache as the one to deliever the finishing blow.

What's the vote-down for, anyway?

First, if an organization acquires a "monopoly" because they were the only ones to believe in, invest money in, and actually do a grand thing that others called impossible -- a thing of great benefit to humanity -- there is something wrong with people who want to kneecap them for that.

Second, let's have some evidence that Google, in this case, is doing anything abusive at all. From what I've seen so far, their actions have all been directed towards trying to make more books accessible. If that's true, it's perverse to accuse them of being the ones going against the public interest.

Id like to see google give the book content away - including the ability to mash up. They have enough money to just do it for the greater good, and write it off as advertising / PR budget [while gaining revenue from the searches due to their market dominance]

Along with this I think there needs to be a change in law to match the change in technology - Perhaps creative works should simply fall into the public domain after n years has passed?

Extrapolating... I'm not sure what this means for say LoTR, the Bible and baroque music. Putting religion aside, these have a large place in the social consciousness, so should effectively be owned by the public [yes, not a logical inference]

Hmm.. a Cathedral is clearly a creative work. Perhaps they are already owned by some kind of public trust, in effect [by subsidies]

Perhaps creative works should simply fall into the public domain after n years has passed?

Yes, perhaps we need something like copyright that expires... what's that? It does? Granting copyright monopoly "for a limited time" is in the US constitution? Interesting... let me give Disney a ring.

I think he is bitching too much. Nobody is forced to join a class action lawsuit's judgement. If you do not want Google to touch your books, then you can simply decline to be included in the class and go sue Google by yourself.

The theory that Google is the only entity that can do this project (which seems to be the main point of his article) is also wrong. The author's guild settled with Google for over 100 mil. Why wouldn't they settle with someone else for a similar sum? They probably would. In fact they would probably be willing to settle for less with the second person. Also the technology to digitize all books would probably be cheaper the second time around too. So if somebody else wants to throw the same resource in the task as Google did, I am sure they can get a another digital of all books.

"But a Xerox machine could make the same boast"

I thought I saw an article recently on some nice software work put into getting clean scans from hard back bindings...

What is the class action lawsuit being referred to?

http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-res...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild#Conflict_with_Goo...

I read this article, and then I read Sergey's Op-Ed in the New York Times. I agree with Sergey more than this guy.

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