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Google's growing tentacles

Democracy Now reports on another part of Google's attempt to attract more business to itself - this time the publication of books and access to them.

"The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether Google is violating antitrust laws by reaching an agreement with authors and publishers to digitizing millions of printed books and posting the contents online.

Over the past five years, Google has partnered with some of the world’s most famous research libraries to scan over seven million books. In 2005, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers filed lawsuits against Google challenging the company’s right to scan copyrighted material and making it searchable online. A $125 million settlement was reached last year, but it’s still awaiting court approval.

Google has defended its project, saying its goal is to improve access to books and to give the public access to millions of out-of-print books. But critics warn the settlement could result in Google having a monopoly of access to information and giving Google an exclusive license to profit from millions of books.

Well, recently, when I was in San Francisco, I interviewed Brewster Kahle, the founder of the non-profit online library, the Internet Archive, located at archive.org. The Internet Archive hosts an online text archive of over a million written books. Brewster Kahle is a prominent critic of Google’s book plan. We invited Google to join us but didn’t receive a response."

Go here to view the video of the interview or read the transcript.

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