Storyville: Google and the World Brain
Mon Feb 18, 10-11.30pm, BBC4
In theory, Google’s plan to create a free, universal digital public library is admirable. In reality, it involved cutting a deal with libraries and citing ‘fair use’ to ride roughshod over copyright issues (scanning some six million books under copyright without their authors’ permission), while skewing dangerously close to seizing a monopoly on the very knowledge it was pledging to disseminate so widely. Subsequent settlements addressed many of those issues, and any company as young as Google should be allowed to make a few honest mistakes. But any company as powerful as Google should also be expected to maintain the highest possible standards in all areas of the business.
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