On 5/19/09 5/19/09 € 9:59 AM, "Ethan Gruber" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Google isn't a dumb company.  They knew this would be the result all along.
> The real losers here are the libraries, especially the ones that funded the
> packaging and transport of their materials to the Google scanning centers
> (because Google didn't pay for that, fyi)  But hey, it looks good to be part
> of such a prestigious group of libraries in partnering with Google to
> deliver content freely* to the public!
> 
> *not free
> 
> Pardon my cynicism,
> Ethan Gruber

I think that's an overly pessimistic assessment. There is a growing corpus
of freely available content being managed by the Hathi Trust[1], that
already numbers in the hundreds of thousands of volumes, and soon likely to
be over a million. Also, since government documents are included, there is a
surprising number of post-1923 public domain titles. So let's not rush to
throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Roy

[1] http://www.hathitrust.org/