Nicht nur ein qualitativer Fehlschlag des Google Book Projektes könnte jede Nachahmung und damit eine digitale Weltbibliothek verhindern, sondern auch ein rechtlicher Fehlschlag, erklärt Siva Vaidhyanathan in einem First Monday Podcast (Transcript)
So one of my big fears is that if Google either settles out of court and decided not to digitize all these copyrighted works in such an aggressive fashion, or loses in court, then every other player is going to be coward away from doing this. In other words, it’s going to be that much harder to convince libraries that they should be doing it. It’s going to be that much harder to convince the other open access advocates, like Brewster Kahle, to push forward and digitize copyrighted material.
Aber das ist nicht alles, Google gibt auch keine Garantie über die Bewahrung der Privatsphäre ab, wie in Bibliotheken üblich:
And most importantly, Google does not do anything to protect user confidentiality and in the world of book searching this is a really important factor. It is an essential part of librarianship. It is an essential part of the ethics and policies of libraries. Users should not feel that their use of any sort of research material might someday come to light and be misinterpreted as some sort of nefarious activity. We should feel comfortable in our information seeking habits. And I’m afraid that Google corralling so many of our information seeking habits puts us all at risk.
Vaidhyanathan schreibt gerade ein Buch über Google, wo wir dies und alles andere dann bequem nachlesen können:
… I want to examine all the different ways Google affects our lives and ultimately what the world looks like through the lens of Google.