Google has put a hold on its plans to archive library books, following concerns by publishers over copyright infringements. Google's ambitious Google Print project has been dogged by critics since the beginning, when it announced its plans to make the full text of all the world's books searchable by anyone.
Google has launched a couple of new initiatives to try and assuage its critics. Firstly, any copyright holder can now tell Google which books they would prefer not to be included in the Google Print project. This is the main reason for the pause in the indexing, as it will give copyright holders time to provide Google with a list of titles they do not wish to have indexed.
As well as this, if you are in or join the Publisher Program, you can now provide Google with a list of books that can be added to your account if they are scanned at a library. This would mean that they would appear in the Google search results, with the hopeful result of increasing revenue and providing feedback on the popularity of your titles.
No doubt Google's ongoing plans to make all of the world's information available in a searchable format will run into problems like this from time to time, especially when that information is owned by some interested party. However, we expect that Google, when it comes up against problems like this, will find some way around them.
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