March 23, 2011 A Digital Library Better Than Google’s By ROBERT DARNTON Cambridge, Mass. ON Tuesday, Denny Chin, a federal judge in Manhattan, rejected the settlement <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html> between Google, which aims to digitize every book ever published, and a group of authors and publishers who had sued the company for copyright infringement. This decision is a victory for the public good, preventing one company from monopolizing access to our common cultural heritage. Nonetheless, we should not abandon Google’s dream of making all the books in the world available to everyone. Instead, we should build a digital public library, which would provide these digital copies free of charge to readers. Yes, many problems — legal, financial, technological, political — stand in the way. All can be solved. Let’s consider the legal questions raised by the rejected settlement. Beginning in 2005, Google’s book project made the contents of millions of titles searchable online, leading the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to claim that the snippets made available to readers violated their copyrights. Google could have defended its actions as fair use, but the company chose instead to negotiate a deal. [...] Continua qui: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/opinion/24darnton.html