Special Events

Google: Digitizing Works for Public Good or Private Benefit?

By Michael Causey, WIW President

A panel that was both knowledgeable and passionate dissected a critical topic at the October 25 WIW/FWF seminar that pointedly asked, “Whose Work Is It, Anyway?” The program was also sponsored by the National Press Club’s Public Affairs Committee and was held at the Press Club’s downtown ballroom.

The event was covered by leading media organizations such as C-SPAN’s Book TV and the National Journal.

At issue was Google’s ambitious project to digitize whole books and post parts of them (the exact size of the excerpts remains one of many bones of contention) on the Internet, while making no payment to the authors.

Moderator Marvin Kalb summed it up when he asked at the outset, “Is this an audacious program of corporate theft? A laudable act of cultural preservation? An unrivalled marketing opportunity for writers and publishers?”

As with almost everything else in Washington, D.C., the answers depended on who was talking.

To panelist Sidney Verba, a Harvard University Professor working with Google to digitize that University’s massive collection, the benefits of the program are so great as to be almost incalculable for the public good. For starters, he said, Google’s effort would level one of society’s great inequalities: access to information and education.

But David Robbins, best-selling author of War of the Rats and the new The Assassins Gallery, likened Google to Dracula. Under the guise of public good, he said, Google is trying to get authors and publishers to “invite it in” so it can ultimately control a proprietary database of authors’ works. Robbins stressed he backs the goal of preserving and disseminating written works, but believes it should be run by a public entity such as the Library of Congress and not a private enterprise like Google that may have other motivations than the public good. “I just don’t trust a private entity to do a public chore,” he said.

A panelist who said he had “no ax to grind” in this battle was Andrew Glass, senior editor of The Capital Leader. He urged both sides to take a “real world” view of the issue. For example, though he seemed to agree that a public entity should handle this effort, he cautioned that Google is the only entity stepping forward to do the job. He predicted Google would show more sensitivity to authors’ concerns and also warned against taking an “apocalyptic” view of Google’s intentions and involvement.

Attorneys representing authors and publishers touched on what they believe is at least a big chunk of Google’s motivation: selling more advertising on its Web portal.

“We can offer rationalizations” about Google’s alleged altruism here, but “it is theft pure and simple,” said Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs at the Association of American Publishers. Google’s main motive in this endeavor, Adler charged, is to “serve their own purpose of selling ads” and delivering “eyeballs” to go to its Web site.

Adler and Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken agreed that they have no quarrel with other search engines that are using small portions of a book on their Web sites, under licensing agreements with authors and publishers. “We favor it, but it must be licensed and not appropriated” as Google is trying to do, Aiken said.

But attorney Jonathan Band, who represents a coalition of search engines including Google, said that an author can opt-out of the Google program if he or she wants to. He also noted that Google would allow searchers to access only about ten sentences of each book, and fewer if it was a reference book like a dictionary or a book of poems or haiku.

Google opponents countered that authors and publishers should not have the onus of opting out placed on them, while Google supporters urged that the project would be too expensive and even unmanageable if Google had to chase down each author for formal permission.

Were minds changed by the event? Hard to say, and ultimately the real battle is going to be in the courts or Congress. But events like the FWF/WIW “Whose Work Is It, Anyway?” seminar are helping air the issues out and informing the decision-making process for us all.

“Programs like this, and our ongoing public advocacy in support of writers, are not possible without the generous support of our members and sponsors,” said David O. Stewart, FWF president and WIW board member. To find out more about supporting FWF, e-mail freedom@washwriter.org.

Among the other guests at the event were WIW President Michael Causey, Past WIW President and FWF Vice President Joe Barbato, WIW Secretary and FWF Secretary/Treasurer Ken Ackerman, WIW Treasurer Al Portner, FWF Board Member John Lowe, FWF Advisory Board Member Beryl Lieff Benderly, WIW Board Members Gene Meyer, Rob Udowitz and Phil Piemonte, and past WIW Board Members Beth Duris and Adam Meyer.