Comments on: ‘Digitized by Google’: Corporate graffiti on public-domain classics—every page

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:04:22 +0000

Chris, thanks for your thoughts. We’ll just agree to disagree over the branding issue (remember–in the future the branding could get more obnoxious). As for the Golden Triangle–hey, maybe Branko can pass the suggestion on to others at DP. Thanks. David

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 16:31:26 +0000

I fail to see a problem, really. I checked one of their books myself—The Golden Triangle by Maurice Leblanc, an Arsène Lupin novel which I had not previously had the opportunity to read and had never been available elsewhere on-line—and found the branding completely unobtrusive. It didn't obscure the reading of any of the text; to be honest I barely even noticed it. It's not all that different from a webcomic artist sticking the URL of his site at the bottom of every comic strip frame, so that if someone hot-links the image elsewhere without saying where it came from, they'll get the credit for making it available that they deserve, and the viewer will know where to go if they want to find the rest of it. I would rather like to be able to read the thing in HTML, though, rather than the original book page scans. Wonder what the chances of getting Distributed Proofing to add this book to their digitization list would be?

By: Liviu

Liviu — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 03:51:24 +0000

I have not heard about the Open Content Alliance before though I knew Yahoo wanted to do something about digitizing too. The one thing I like about Google though is that it really forced the issue by the digitization of everything copyrighted or not.

Now if someone would try and force the issue with an open format ebook file… Here I had high hopes for Amazon, and I think they are really missing a historic opportunity with their Mobipocket thing.

I have no affiliation with Google, do not own the stock, and for selfish (pi/2~1.57% rebates on all orders) reasons I use Amazon’s A9 engine (based on Google) for all my searches, but I think that digitization is going to be one of Google’s major achievements if only by energizing the debate so forcefully.

Liviu

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:43:38 +0000

Hey, Ryan, you're entitled--thanks for your thoughts. I myself am afraid of Google preempting other, more user-friendly approaches such as that of the Open Content Alliance. - David

By: ryanramseyer

ryanramseyer — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:08:15 +0000

“The Do No Evil Boys are like little kids desecrating international monuments with spray cans.”

Let’s get real here. Google is allowing us to download entire libraries, tens of thousands of books that we wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Their unobtrusive brand at the bottom is a small price to pay for this access. This is creation, not desecration.