Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr published "Reining in Google", a fantastically disingenuous op-ed in today's Washington Times, in which they excoriate Google for planning to rescue books from the scrapheap of history by making them Web-searchable just like all the other information that most of the info-consuming world cares about.
On Forbes, Nick Schulz responds with an op-ed of his own, "Don't Fear Google," in which he masterfully deconstructs Schoeder and Barr's crazy-talk:
Pat Schroeder, the former Congresswoman from Colorado is now the president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and a vigorous opponent of Google's plan. She is also an author. I went to Amazon and searched in her book 24 Years of House Work and Still a Mess for the word "property," and Amazon's technology found for me on page 286 the following snippet:
"Protecting intellectual property is my main focus at AAP. Technology has made it so easy to copy anything you create …"
She's right about technology. However, my finding that snippet and using it for this article is not a copyright violation. I didn't ask Schroeder or her publisher for permission to use the quote in her book. Indeed, there's an entire industry, book reviewing, predicated on the ability of people to do something similar to what I've just done.
(via Copyfight)
