The recent court action that a group of 15 Indian authors and publishers have initiated against Google Books raises some interesting issues. The court action is a reflection of the concern felt by a large section of the Indian publishing industry about what they see as a concerted effort by the company to subvert copyright laws in India. In particular, what has caused great consternation is the ?opt out? clause, which places the burden of objection on the author. This essentially means that Google Books is free to scan anything it feels like, and unless the author objects, this lack of overt reaction is deemed to be a form of consent, allowing the company to go ahead.
At one level, this is perhaps the only practical way to make a venture like this work?the process of getting permission author by author is simply too unwieldy to work. At another, this steamrollers authors and publishers into tacit acceptance. By not taking any responsibility of making authors aware of the situation, it places the entire burden of opting out rest on the party that might have no reason to be aware of this development. In particular, it discriminates against precisely those that need the greatest protection?authors who are not part of a powerful connected collective.
The issue is interesting for it lays out some of the touchy areas of conflict about copyright in the Internet era. For the user, Google Books is a blessing, albeit a mixed one, for it allows access to the content of books in an easy and useful way. Of course, since in a large number of cases the access is only partial, it is not a particularly reliable instrument of research. On the whole, though, it serves to make the vast body of knowledge available in the world through books accessible in a way that no library can hope to replicate.
By being able to search books for precise phrases and subjects, Google Books is tailor-made for research. The housing of such vast quantities of knowledge in a seamless, single place changes the very notion of research, such is the profound impact of this initiative. By bringing rare, out of print works in the public domain, it democratises knowledge and makes learning from what we already know but find difficult to access a painless process. Quite simply, Google will build the world?s largest integrated library, with the advantage of digital navigation and easy manipulation.
On the other hand, it also means placing all our information wealth in hands of a single private corporation. Many have argued that the settlement that has been reached is in the danger of giving the company almost total control over all content contained in books without a serious possibility of competition. No other rival is currently pursuing this market seriously, and Google?s financial muscle and the complex copyright issues involved make the potential entry of any player very unlikely. The question is whether the undoubted advantage of aggregating knowledge is offset by the dangers of placing all our information eggs in a private basket?
The danger is a real one and highlights some of the paradoxes thrown up in the Internet age. At one level, the Internet has freed up knowledge and allowed equal access to information at a scale never imagined before. It celebrates the free and inexorably breaks down barriers that create walls between human beings and information. It gives everyone a voice and reverses traditional power structures by arming every individual with a pen, camera and a microphone. It gives form to the idea of popular opinion and dismantles centralised forms of authority. The Internet is in many ways scale-neutral, it is almost impossible for any one person, party or company to dominate the World Wide Web for it is navigated on the basis of curiosity riding on free will.
This is where the idea that eventually the Internet for all its seeming heterogeneity will be available through a single funnel is so troubling. An idea like Google Books represents both all that is wonderful and all that is terrifying about the digital revolution. Should the world?s knowledge be entrusted to a single corporation no matter how noble its purpose and how revolutionary the benefit of its intervention?
The case filed by Indian authors and publishers is the tip of a much larger debate. A knowledge society needs its information in a fluid, readily accessible and easily navigable form. It also needs diversity, freedom and the chaotic cadence of a million voices that sing their own determined tunes. The question before us is not an easy one. Either way, we will all win and we will all lose.
The author is CEO, Future Brands