Copyright cop-out stifles innovation

By Graeme Philipson
August 30, 2005

Imagine if all the contents of all the world's libraries were on the internet and you could search every book written. Imagine if the combined wisdom of all the writers who had ever lived was as easily available on the web as today's news.

It is technically feasible. It means scanning the books using optical character recognition technology and putting them in a searchable database.

That is what Google is doing. Last December it said it had an agreement with some of the world's leading libraries, including Harvard and Stanford, to digitise their books so they can be searched through the internet.

The Google Print Library Project aims to unlock the wisdom of the ages. Virtually anything anybody ever committed to print will be instantly accessible. Estimates of the sheer volume of human thought vary, but it vastly exceeds that which is online.

Google has a grand plan to move us to a fully online world.

Last week's announcement of the Google Talk instant messaging system indicates Google is fast becoming the Microsoft of the 21stcentury. Google's way of looking at the world, and the potential it sees in unlimited information, universally accessible, has far-reaching consequences. It has much greater consequences than the output of the 20th-century mind-set still apparent in most companies' business models.

Consider the battle between 21st-century mindsets and those of the 19th century. Earlier this month, Google halted its library program after protests from publishers who said it was breaking copyright laws and depriving them of income.

Google argues it does not bypass publishers, but helps readers find books under fair use provisions of US copyright law. Google says it helps book sales and that publishers can opt out, but publishers say it should seek permission first.

Publishers are saying we should pay a premium to use old technology that makes it harder to find information. They're saying that because they own the words of authors, anyone who wishes to read them should buy a book and pay money to middlemen who add nothing to the information value chain - indeed, they detract.

Publishers had a role in the old world. Their job was to aggregate information and sell it in a digestible form, for which they charged money. But the internet and other technologies made publishers' roles as information clearing-house irrelevant, outdated, anachronistic and obsolete. The world has changed, but they have not.

The publishers' actions highlight copyright's absurdities and the greed of its beneficiaries. They offer no justification for their actions other than a desire to protect income based on a technology and a business model invented centuries ago.

Copyright was developed to protect the rights of publishers, not authors. It was intended to protect the publishers from competition for seven to 14 years before releasing the work into the public domain, where all could benefit. Grasping publishers have persuaded governments to extend the life of copyright protection in some cases, up to 70 years.

The real profits go to publishers, who hide their greed behind a facade of altruistic concern for the artists they blatantly exploit.

The result is the manufactured stardom of second-rate rock bands and third-rate airport pulp-fiction authors.

There is, fortunately, an increasing understanding that today's copyright inhibits the free flow of information and discourages artistic freedom. Every artist owes an enormous debt to those who went before, and the point at which artistic licence and derivation ends and copyright starts is forever murky. Copyright seeks to lock innovation away.

The copyright holders are on the wrong side of history. Thanks to Google and to the many advances of the digital age, the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down. The sooner the better.
