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Publishers’ Group Seeks Six-Month Delay in Google Library ProjectThe Association of American Publishers has asked Google to suspend for six months its plan to digitize books from the collections of several major research libraries and make them searchable online. AAP Vice President for Legal and Governmental Affairs Allan R. Adler told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the group made the request in a June 10 letter that stopped short of calling for the project to “cease and desist.” “We’ve simply asked for a six-month moratorium to facilitate discussion,” said Adler.Adler said in the June 21 Chronicle that the letter was prompted by AAP members’ concern that they have not “gotten satisfactory answers to their questions about copyright infringement.” It requested a meeting between Google executives and leaders of the publishing association. Susan Wojcicki, director of product management for Google Print, told the Chronicle, “We have received the letter, and we have read it, and we are in discussions with publishers, authors, and the associate organizations to understand their concerns—to listen to them as well as talk about the benefits of Google Print.” The AAP letter follows one sent to Google May 20 by the Association of American University Presses questioning the legality of the Google Print for Libraries project, indicating that it “appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale.” The Google project has also raised privacy issues: The CNet online news service reported June 17 that Google’s contract with the University of Michigan, released June 17 by the privacy-interest group Google Watch, contains no provisions to protect the privacy of people who will use the service to search the school’s library over the internet. “I would have hoped that the University of Michigan would be sensitive to the fact that Google tracks everything that everyone searches,” said Google Watch founder Daniel Brandt. The contract also specifies that Google will make two digital copies of all books—one for Google, the other for the university—sparking publishers’ concerns that Google plans commercial use for the material, some of which is still under copyright protection. “In some ways, that contract illustrates exactly why publishers are concerned,” the AAP’s Adler said in the June 22 Business Week Online. Posted June 24, 2005. |
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