Don't Fear Google

Forbes

Commentary

Nick Schulz, 11.03.05, 11:00 AM ET

Google wants to scan all the books in the stacks of several of the world’s major research libraries to make these books searchable online. But lawsuits are threatening to shut the project down. Should they?

Called the Google Print Library Project, it has produced strong opposition, particularly from the publishing industry and writers’ guilds. Opponents fear this effort violates their property and copyrights and robs them of just desserts. They have some legitimate concerns, but ultimately the project is not just in Google’s (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) interest, but in the interest of writers and publishers as well--and of the rest of the world, too.

Under Google’s plan, searches of scanned books will yield relevant “snippets” from those books on Google’s Web pages. Google hasn’t clearly defined what those snippets might be--hence much of the alarm over their proposal. Theoretically, a “snippet” could be an entire book, which would no doubt be a violation of copyright. The company announced today that it has launched the first part of the project using books in the public domain.

Fortunately, we have a sense ...