August 13th, 2009
Google Books privacy debate: Whose side are you on?
I was listening to NPR yesterday, and one story lingered with me throughout the day. So, I figured I’d take it to the blogs and see what you all have to say about the matter.
Here’s the deal: Some authors have mixed feelings about Google’s ongoing behemoth of a project to scan millions of library books and make them available online. The company has scanned 7 million books and counting, many of which are already available through Google Books. But there are still many that have yet to be released due to an ongoing copyright lawsuit filed by authors and publishers.
Jonathan Lethem, along with Michael Chabon and Cory Doctorow, are a few authors who have signed on to a campaign organized by Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group. The campaign is intended to pressure Google Books into providing more privacy guarantees for its readers. Basically, the group wants Google Books users to have as much privacy as they would receive at a library.
“They know which books you search for,” EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said in the NPR broadcast. “They know which books you browse through; they know how long you spend on each page.”
Cohn sounds a little paranoid to me. So what if they know that you’re looking at books online? The information is the same kind as someone who’s surfing the Web, and it receives the same privacy measures as any Google user.
“The regular Google privacy policy says that we do not disclose your personal information except in some really narrow circumstances, like emergencies and search warrants,” Daphne Keller, a Google attorney, said in the NPR story.
Still, this group believes books deserve more privacy than normal Web content. What makes books any different from anything else on the Web?
The reason these groups are so upset is that there are actually limits to how much anonymity a user receives when using Google Books. Google’s tentative settlement for the copyright lawsuit mentioned above says that readers will have free browsing rights to only 20 percent of a book. For Google to be able to monitor the amount of book in which a person has read, then it will have to keep track of the person’s reading — hence, the privacy issue.
The EFF and the ACLU of Northern California want Google to add a guarantee into the copyright settlement that makes legally binding commitments to never divulge a reader’s information, unless there’s a warrant involved. But Google’s Keller says this settlement isn’t really the place for all this privacy mess.
“It would be weird to put it in the agreement. Keller said. “(It’s) not the kind of thing that would generally come up in the settlement of a copyright conflict.”
She’s right. First of all, I think this whole mess is ridiculous. It’s not like Google is collecting every single copy of every single book, scanning them, and then burning any evidence that they ever existed. The books are still out there on library and book store shelves. If you don’t want to read it online, walk down the block to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy for yourself. If you’re so worried about people knowing what book you’re looking at online, then put on a trench coat and sunglasses, and go to the book store.
However, I do agree with Lethem that the relationship between the reader and the physical book itself is important. I personally prefer to be holding a paper book in my hand. That being said, I find Lethem’s argument that Google Books users are “leaving a digital trail” to be moot since people are already leaving a digital trail by using search engines in their everyday lives. How is it any different from getting on the Internet and looking up the book to see where it can be purchased, for example, or to read reviews of the book. Amazon stores your information and recommends products to you around what you’ve looked at on its Web site.
I personally think the issue of privacy and Google Books is being blown out of proportion. I think the fact that all of these books are being preserved and are being made easily accessible is a good thing. If people don’t want Big Brother watching them, then don’t have to click on any Google Books links. Google has said that they will make institutions, like libraries and campuses, more private. That way, if you’re professor assigns you a book, which is accessible via Google Books, you won’t have the privacy excuse to use when you show up to class the next day without your assignment.
Listen to and read the full story at NPR.org, and share your thoughts below.
Jennifer R. Bergen is a journalist and blogger living in New York City. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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