Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
My argument has never been against preserving the books, Google or otherwise. I lean towards the opinion that the copyright holder should make that decision, but as the issue has been decided for the time being by the courts then the books themselves are most likely being preserved. If not we can blame Google  |
As a basic question, why do you think the copyright holder should decide what is preserved and what is not? A copyright holder may have no interest in preserving a particular book that isn't valuable at the time, but future generations may think it's valuable, even as just a historical example of what was published in some decade in the past.
The issue is really that what benefits society as a whole and what benefits a copyright holder don't necessarily overlap in every instance. And since copyright is a limited set of rights that are designed to benefit society as a whole, I think it makes more sense that copyright owners don't get to pick and choose what should be preserved.
Even more basic though, is how allowing preservation over the objections of a copyright holder hurts that copyright holder. It doesn't. Google, or any other company that decides to do book scanning for preservation, can't suddenly start selling the books (that is a right that the copyright holder has); however, they can make those books available decades in the future when the copyright has expired.