Microsoft Joins Yahoo! Book Search Plan 128
tanman writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft has signed on to 'work with the Open Content Alliance (OCA), set up by the Internet Archive, to initially put 150,000 works online. The move comes as Google faces growing legal pressure from publishers over its own global digital library plans.'"
Replicate... (Score:2, Insightful)
You can pin that one on google. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can pin that one on google. (Score:2)
Re:You can pin that one on google. (Score:1)
Re:You can pin that one on google. (Score:3, Informative)
Thing is, if I understand Google's goals correctly, they don't want to display the whole book online, they want to index the content to show in their search results - that way anyone in a 'buying mind' will be able to get a list of books that fit their topic. Bottom line is fair use is fair use. Either Amazon is violating copyrights, has an agreement with the publishers that allow them to sho
Opt-in vs Opt-out (Score:2)
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:1, Troll)
Mabye you ought to RTFA:
From TFA:
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:3, Funny)
mmmmm candy corn..... pretty colors.
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:2)
That article must have only run on Slashdot one time. I only read articles after they've been duped at least three times.
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:2)
Actually, most of the books Yahoo intends to put up do not required anyone's permission because the protections on them have exprired.
My reading of this project sounds a lot like Project Gutenberg, but with the ability to search within the texts (something PG does not have).
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:1)
About the organisitions involved:
To kick this off, Internet Archive will host the material and sometimes helps with digitization, Yahoo will index the content and is also funding the digitization of an initial corpus of American literature collection that the University of California system is selecting, Adobe and HP are helping with the processing software, University
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:4, Informative)
Yahoo (and now MS it seems) is limiting it's project to digitizing works in the public domain, and works that have been authorized.
So, they've both got projects in the works, albeit with different scopes and intents.
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:2)
Guess which project the majority of Slashdotters supports?
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:2)
The one that will be most useful?
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:2)
Re:Yahoo??? (Score:2)
www.openlibrary.org (Score:3, Informative)
Re:www.openlibrary.org (Score:2)
DRM is MS's advantage here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM is MS's advantage here (Score:2, Insightful)
Conspiracy (Score:4, Funny)
And you thought it was a simple effort to make it easier to access print resources online! Ha!
Re:Conspiracy (Score:1, Insightful)
I can see it now.
"Welcome to the OPEN content Alliance. Unfortunately, you are not using Internet Explorer/book reader/whatever..." "Please download and install the MICROSOFT reader, available only on VISTA. Enter your credit card number here: "...etc.
I like Google's ideas much, much better.
Danger to publishers? (Score:5, Interesting)
One important fact that's overlooked, though, is that if Google has digital copies of all those pieces of works, that "digital database" could be stolen or comprimised. If that were to happen, publishers could never totally eradicate all the stolen books that would be floating around on the Internet or dark nets.
Furthermore, it's possible that technical weaknesses in Google's online book search implementation might be used to reconstruct the entire book. For example, search for what you know to be the first sentence in a book. When Google returns an excerpt with the second, third, and fourth sentence, then just do another search for the fourth sentence, and Google will return an excerpt with the fifth, sixth, seventh sentence, etc. I'm not claiming that's how Google's search feature will work; I'm merely presenting the possibility that technical weaknesses might be exploited to the detriment of the publishing industry.
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just go to B&N or Borders and read the book at that rate? I'm sure someone who is willing to go thru the pains of reading a book in that fashion would never actually buy the book. Who would invest this kind of time and effort into reading a book when they can just do it the traditional way and fork out a couple of bucks and save themselves the agro?
This is also like saying I can goto my local bookstore and write down the contents of a book in a notebook, thus robbing the author of hard earned cash... but think about it, you go to copy a 20 dollar book, spend 10 dollars on notepads and about 50 hours to actually do it... who the hell is going to do that?
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because you could get a computer to do the searching automatically, and reconstruct the entire text in a matter of minutes or hours, and upload it to eCamel for the entire world to download.
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
Exactly! Why don't the other posters get that concept.
yes, smart asses, I'm very well aware of the ease of automation. I'm also aware at the ease of defeating these simple methods. Such an exploit would not last for very long.
I swear, people don't take the time to think about things of this nature.
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
I'm a google and g-mail user as well so I have nothing against google. But the pagerank issue is exactly why they will try to cut this kind of abuse off fast. A lot of up and coming companies make really sophmoric mistakes, Google knows at this point that easy exploits will not be tolerated and will damage their reputation. They have too much riding on this to let this slide.
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
It should be really bloody obvious, but copyright infringement via Google can be automated, while copying things onto a notepad can't. Once one person writes the program to copy things off Google, EVERYONE can copy things off Google with minimal effort (with the wrinkle that Google would no doubt make ongoing server modifications to try to break said program).
Or did you, and all the moderators, sleep through the past decade of skyro
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
No difference? For most people (please note that I say 'most,' not 'all'), it's a choice between watching on a 17-inch screen in their den sitting on an office chair, with tiny computer speakers, compared to sitting in your living room on the couch, with a screen twice as large, and a good chance that you've got a decent sound system to go along with it. And yet, downloading movies and watching them on your P
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
But how many of them are ever read? That's more to the point. There are tons of people who horde digital media from a p2p and never use the majority of it. I'm assuming that this is true of books as well, people download them with the intention of reading them at a later time but either find out that e-books are a hassle or just never revisit the idea. Why do you think that no e-book retailer has gone gangbusters li
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1)
No one is concerned about someone reading the book that way. The concern is over someone copying the book that way and then splatting the copy all over the Internet. Right now, book traders buy books, cut them out of their bindings, scan them, and put out digital versions in a variety of formats. With highly anticipated titles, this of
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:4, Informative)
B) Oh what a nightmare if it did and we had an electronic backup of every book in existence...
The fact is that copyright infringement of books is already easy. All it takes is an automatic document feeder and a good PDF generator. $500.
It's happening and it will continue to happen. But Google is acting very responsibly so the publishers are better off with them than leaving users to their own creative pursuits.
I seriously doubt that illegal trading of music would be so big if iTunes or something like it had been around from the beginning. But the industry couldn't get their act together.
-- John.
Re:Danger to Logic. (Score:2)
Also each book downloaded is relatively time consuming. My point is someone would notice you stealing googlecopies.
As to time machines... do you seriously think the patent system is wha
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see what the threat is from either search engine, as I would never, ever buy a book to read
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1)
Sooner or later someone will be able to develop software to hack into the Google database. For sure Google can not guarantee 100% that it won't happen. This reason might be enough for some publishers to not participate.
The advantage of books till now is that they can't be copied digitally easily as opposite to music or video. So book publishers might not want to enter the digital e
One chapter at a time... (Score:1)
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
speculation is needless; read the Google Library Project FAQ and become informed.
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Simple, really. Grab the first few pages (i.e. the jpg files) until it tells you you can't go on. Then search for the last word on that page (the page you stopped at), go to that page, then continue on for a few more pages. Once you have them all, compile into an eBook and put up a torrent. All automated.
Add some autodiscovery of books code, let it run for a few months, maybe add some pro
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:3, Interesting)
They can't do that anyway. Someone could just as easily transcribe/OCR the book into an etext. We don't need Google to steal the world's literature for us, we can manage it just fine on our own.
Once it's in digital form, it can never be completely eradicated. There will always be someone on a P2P network or with an FTP server or an Angelfire page with the file avai
Re:Danger to publishers? (Score:2)
No, it's not an important fact. What you are overlooking is that anyone can OCR a book and put it on the internet and release it into the wild in perpetuity right now - and I bet there's a lot
Opt-in System (Score:5, Informative)
Orthogonal purposes (Score:2)
The Google system is a search system through open and closed content.
The Open Content Alliance's goal is to make the content available.
So the Google system should be able to index OCAs work just as Yahoo will do.
The overlap comes in areas where Google has already secured rights or where the work is in the public domain, in which case Google is providing the content as well.
The "opt-in" part of making your content available is available to everyone i
Re:Opt-in System (Score:2)
Google should follow MSN and Yahoo on this one.
Yeah, and I'm starting a new search engine that will only index pages whose copyright holder's permission I've secured. It won't be nearly as useful, but it will avoid possibly upsetting content producer's. Never mind that opt-in indexing and searching will limit it to a tiny subset of works and most works will be permanently excluded since most copyright is held by unknown and pretty much uncontactable parties. All sarcasm aside, the open content allianc
Re:Opt-in System (Score:2)
It does seem a strange interpretation of copyright laws that copyright owners have to opt out of Google's "humanitarianism". Someone point me to an article that explains how this works
It's really pretty simple. It is legal to copy and republish small excerpts of works without the permission of the copyright holder. It is legal to copy the entire work for the purpose of creating the proper excerpt, provided you do not otherwise use the work (and you meet 4 legal criteria) without the permission of the co
14 Libraries and Microsoft Joined Last Night (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.opencontentalliance.org is a good site for this stuff.
Something I am jazzed about is a cool bookviewer at http://www.openlibrary.org/ [openlibrary.org] showing the first books from University of California sponsored by Yahoo! and the "vision book" there tells the story of what we envision and some of the announcements.
onward!
-brewster Digital Librarian Internet Archive (administers the Open Content Alliance)
Re:14 Libraries and Microsoft Joined Last Night (Score:2)
I do Digital Library development at the National Library of Wales (I think I've been in touch with you before over petabox).
The bookviewer is similar to stuff that we've been developing and looking at - is the code available somewhere? If it's not public, you're welcome to mail me (I'm easy to find!).
Re:14 Libraries and Microsoft Joined Last Night (Score:1)
Difference of service (Score:4, Informative)
Well, not really (Score:1)
How do we sign on to Googles version? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How do we sign on to Googles version? (Score:1)
I want every single book on-line (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I want every single book on-line (Score:2)
Why yes, it is unreasonable to have every textbook on a programming language.
I'd hate to think of how long it would take to compile.
Re:I want every single book on-line (Score:1)
Re:I want every single book on-line (Score:1)
Very valid point. In my state, it is very easy to interlibrary loan materials within the COUNTY. Trying to get materials from outside of the county is difficult, but not impossible. Trying to get materials from another public library in another state? Unthinkable/Impossible. Granted, if I was at a university, it would be easier. But there is still the time delay. And not every book is available as an inter-library loan. I
From the article (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:From the article (Score:1)
First, how are works in the public domain "otherwise restricted"? They're in the public domain, right?
Second, Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] has already done a pretty darn good job of posting works in the public domain. They have 16,000+ books online alr
Re:From the article (Score:2)
The enemy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, friend... We -are- talking about Microsoft here. I'm wondering when Yahoo will find MS's knife in its back.
Blog Post from Open Library Programmer (Score:5, Informative)
http://codinginparadise.org/weblog/2005/10/introd
Check it out.
Brad Neuberg
Re:Blog Post from Open Library Programmer (Score:2)
Re:Blog Post from Open Library Programmer (Score:2)
-WS
Re:Blog Post from Open Library Programmer (Score:2)
Nice work!
I'm reminded of all the "viewers" that were being marketed during the dot-com boom when the term "ebook" was bandied with an ever increasing urgency. The most impressive of the lot (IMHO) were actually PDFs that simulated page turns and came complete with interactive menus and coloured "paper." I designed many such PDFs myself and while some folks at Adobe were duly impressed, I had this sinking feeling that no ma
Silly, but what do you expect (Score:2)
Whole new level of Thesaurus? (Score:1)
Re:Whole new level of Thesaurus? (Score:1)
let google innovate
Re:Whole new level of Thesaurus? (Score:1)
Parallels! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yahoo -- Google
===
Seems to be a game of 'who can do the most and seem the coolest'...
This is simultaneously good and bad for everyone... (kind of like the Cold War)
A total gem from a related article... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Principally and philosophically, we are aligning with the notion that intellectual property should not be proprietarily owned by any commercial company," Tiedt (MSN manager) said.
Re:A total gem from a related article... (Score:1)
I wonder... (Score:2)
Required reading (Score:3, Insightful)
Marketing Mistake (Score:2)
Microsoft is an industry-leading company (whether y'all like it or not) -- for them to begin copying everything Google does establishes Google's domination over them.
They just keep making the door wider and wider for Google to step right into their own markets with behavior like this. I firmly believe that the Microsoft marketing machine is making some serious mistakes in their fig
What has Microsoft 'innovated'? (Score:2)
Is Microsoft already resigning to playing second-fiddle to ALL of Google's ideas? Can they not innovate anything on their own?
What have they 'innovated'? Flight Simulator was bought from the Bruce Artwick Organization. Viso was purchased. Solomon from Great Plains Software. Excel came from the same spreadsheet software the 'others' came from. Even Hotmail was purchased from someone else. Has Microsoft released anything that wasn't already available or previously available under the original/previous owne
Its a trap! (Score:2)
Even though Microsoft is second fiddle to Google (Score:1)
Ho-hum (Score:2)
In hindsight, smarter than Google (Score:2)
Microsoft and Open... (Score:1)
Sunny Day! (Score:3, Interesting)
So was everybody walking around talking about how Sunny Day is so good for humanity and is a beacon of light in a greedy world? No. Everybody knew that Sunny Day was making money on the publication. That's why they put out the booklet. If they couldn't make money on it anymore, guess what? No more free maps. No more free coupons.
Google is just a big Sunny Day. They want to make money. They think free maps are cool, sure. But if free maps, free email, freely searchable books, free internet searching, etc. didn't contribute to advertizing dollars anymore they'd probably put those on the back burner and work on other projects that made Google richer.
MS wants more money and so does Google. Google just gives away free stuff.
Size matters. Google Print vs. OCA (Score:1)
"Microsoft: Your Passion, Our Profit."
Why do all the big players... (Score:1)
-Slashdot Junky
Re:Continuing (Score:2)
Re:Continuing (Score:1)
It's Business! (Score:2)
This is just an analysis of the business rationale. So, please don't reply with statements like, "Yea but wouldn't you rather Google have the monopoly than Evil MS?".
What is interesting is that Google is not in it for the pure benefit to humaniity of boo
Re:this must frost google's OO (Score:3, Interesting)
It looks like another nail in the Google Print Coffin. Author's Guild and AAP both suing.
OK. They have been sued over their regular page indexing as well, but that did not end google searching. Google has the legal precedent here and seems likely to prevail.
Can we add this to the growing list of projects that Google has released that just haven't panned out, dare I say flopped? Google Search appliance, Google Web Accelerator, GTalk, Google Reader, Personalized Search, Google Ride Finder, Google Persona
Re:this must frost google's OO (Score:2)
Google is using the same model that all the internet dot bombs used. Spend spend spend, the good pr will get people to like us and we'll figure out a way to make a profit later.
Yeah, because all the dot bombs were profitable for four years running in the post dot bomb era. Google is making money. Guess what, Microsoft has not broken even yet on the Xbox. Is it going to be cancelled too?
There have been tons of articles talking about why Google leaves almost everything in beta... it's so they can avoid