The thorn in Google's side...

[one love]

This week marks the second time that Google's efforts to create an electronic library has been disturbed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1596605,00.html

In a time of talk of massive open source and file sharing, what are your thoughts on an easily accesible electronic library such as that which Google is attempting. I have heard of Google wanting to catalog the entire internet and make it available offline, good idea?

 

[Deacon]

I don't know...this is an iffy subject for me...make all of the books available online? That's crazy

 

[tweaker]

I think it would be great to have all text ever written searchable and in electronic format. It would be such an incredible research tool. In terms of just putting books into electronic format, Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ ) has been doing this for years. They work almost exclusively with public domain works, so mostly old litterature.

 

[micro]

I think we should just have a good ol book burning party and solve the worlds heating problem this winter!


Of course not. But why not have the books fully accesable to people online. They did it with music!
Besides im not going to curl up on my bed with my pc just to read a good book. Ill still buy them.

It could be good or bad for the economy. book sales may go down, more unemployment. But it may not affect it at all. Also now there will have to be people inputing the data. How long will that take!

 

[amiel]

Go Google

 

[simplicity]

I think it's a pretty good idea if there are some protective provisions. I sure don't want to see authors give up on publishing due to lack of financial return. At the same time, a large number of authors who would not normally be published would receive recognition.

I like the idea of selling supporting products relating to free literature. Like a telescope manufacturer can write about the joys of seeing the stars and then mention the worthwhile features of their particular product.

There should probably be protection for recently released entertainment and special interest products - e.g. Harry Potter and recent National Geographics magazines.

When I was younger I was never able to get published. But now I just fill up the meta fields on my PDFs. The search engines do the rest of the work. Then a guy like me with barely coherent writing and really poor spelling can get a bit of exposure, as if I actually know what I'm talking about in my material.

 

[chritophera]

Each time they hit a roadblock, they make headway elsewhere....this is from Detroit last week...

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?articleId=27990