Cory over at boingboing.net points to a great discussion of Google’s library book-scanning project that was conducted on computing guru David Farber’s invitation-only “interesting people” mailing list. Tim O’Reilly, who took part in the discussion, has a description on O’Reilly Radar. For example, Sid Karin notes that mp3.com lost a lawsuit launched by the record industry after the company set up a CD library that would let you listen to streaming digital music files, provided you could prove you owned the original CD they came from. The suit was fought in part on the principle that mp3.com was violating copyright simply by making digital copies of the CDs, much as publishers are arguing that Google is infringing on their copyright simply by scanning books, even though it will not be making the full text available online. Also on the list, Seth Finkelstein points to a wide-ranging discussion about the subject over at the Scrivener’s Error blog.
Links that interest me and maybe you