Now that there’s a lot of heat surrounding Google plans with its library/book scanning project, Yahoo is ramping up its efforts, but in a publisher-friendly way.. The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo is backing, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. It won’t include any copyrighted material unless it receives the permission of a publisher or author.
The alliance includes Adobe, HP, the Internet Archive, European Archive, O’Reilly Media, the University of California and the University of Toronto…the full list of participants is here.
This is a very shrewd move on part of Yahoo..some of the critics of Google’s plan are now joinning the OCA.
But what’s the business model for the project? Not much yet, but according to the FAQs: “The OCA has been in discussions with major publishers and the organizations that represent them in order to explore legal, sustainable business models through which more copyrighted content can be made widely available.”
SEW: Without getting into legal “what if’s,” most of the material in the OCA will be available as full text. There are no limits on how much you can view or download for offline viewing or printing. Kahle said that in some cases you can find content via the Open Content Alliance, print it, and slap a cover on it. Sort of a, “make your own book” type of thing.
NYT: OCA will also make the books accessible to any search engine, including Google’s. (Under Google’s program, a digitized book would show up only through a Google search.) And by focusing at first on works that are in the public domain – such as thousands of volumes of early American fiction – the group is sidestepping the tricky question of copyright violation…Yahoo did not disclose the overall budget for the project, although its own contribution has been estimated at between $300,000 and $500,000 for the first year.
WSJ: The Open Content Alliance says it is discussing with publishers and other content owners how it might make some traditional copyrighted content available, including possibly for a fee.
Related:
– Google Blogs Response To Lawsuit Over Book Project
– Authors Guild Sues Google Over Book Scanning
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