Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
owns information has been an emerging debate since the 1950s, as the
science, technical and medical (STM) publishing world has been
dominated by a relatively small number of large multinational
publishers, to the detriment of the output of smaller publishers, learned
societies and book purchasing by university libraries.
Firms that begin small and emerge as giants en route often lose their
pioneering zeal to the god of Mammon - think Microsoft and Reed
Elsevier. It could be argued that Amazon and Google are moving down
that track. Google's digitization programme currently adds another
layer to the complexities of the publishing world. The US Google Book
Search settlement has produced both positive and negative feedback.
The Google debate
A key player in the Google debate to date has been Professor Robert
Darnton, Director of Harvard University Library. Darnton (2009) is
concerned that 'Google will enjoy what can only be called a monopoly
. . . of access to information . . . what worries me is the fact that Google
has no competitors. The downside has to do with the danger of
monopoly.' Darnton feels that we now 'have a situation where Google
can really ratchet up prices, and that's what really worries me . . .
There's no real authority to enforce fair pricing . . . I'm worried that
Google will be the Elsevier of the future, but magnified by a hundred
times' (Oder, 2009).
In a forum at Columbia University on 13 March 2009, Alexander
Macgillivray, then Associate General Counsel for Products and
Intellectual Property at Google, and now General Counsel at Twitter,
responded to these issues by 'reading the pricing objectives in the
settlement: the realization of revenue at market rates and the realization
of broad access to books by the public'. He suggested that 'there's an
enforceable provision that limits pricing' (Oder, 2009). The debate
continues at the time of writing (Summer 2009), but very important
long-term issues are at stake here. The fact that Google is offering to
make texts available in the USA via a single free-access terminal in every
public library building means that public access to content will be avail-
able in a way not previously possible; but it does place a very restricted
view on access - to one terminal in one physical location - which runs
contrary to the patterns of 'access anywhere, anytime' of Generation Y.
