The fine print in Google's plan

Although much has been made of the recent lawsuit filed by the Assn. of American Publishers on behalf of five plaintiffs (including my own company, Simon & Schuster) against Google for its plans to digitize copyrighted works in the collections of some of the world's major libraries, it remains to be seen whether searching and reading bits and bytes will sell more books. But that is almost beside the point.

Google's attempt to cast itself as the world's archive, delivering books to billions, seems like a noble enough goal at first glance, but the truth is that Google is essentially a newer -- albeit highly effective -- distribution pipeline for the content of books. From that perspective, it becomes imperative that Google works with the other long-standing members in the creative ecosystem -- in this case, the authors and copyright holders -- to make certain that the interests of all are dealt with equitably. Anything short of that, and in particular the scanning and commercial use of copyrighted works without permission, amounts to nothing less than theft.

Authors and publishers have fought for hundreds of years to keep control of their work and its use in order to make a viable living from it. So the publishers' lawsuit is not an argument over "snippets," as Google would have you believe. It is about permission and copying for commercial use.

These essential principles of copyright law can and must be observed by new and old media alike. Indeed, other search engines such as Yahoo, Microsoft and the Open Content Alliance have announced plans for book-search projects that are in line with current copyright conventions. Even Google has announced that in Europe, where the law is even more stringent, its Book Search project will respect copyrights.

For Google, working with American publishers on its library project on a permission basis is certainly possible, but an inconvenience to its philosophy of gobbling up free content to support its advertising-based business model. Copyright is a bump in the road it would rather avoid, and it seems willing to litigate in order to do so.

Yes, let's work together to create great, searchable online databases of books and their content, and then see if readers come. Publishers and authors have been busily digitizing their titles in preparation for that moment. The paper-and-ink book will not go away anytime soon because it is a fabulously simple, enormously practical, appealing and entertaining product that is difficult to improve on.

But whatever the future balance between page and screen turns out to be, the one thing that will not change is the durability of great and creative work, and the author's right to be compensated for that.