Digital Books...

If you are a reader, or just love books, then you should follow the debate going on about digitizing books: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8233324.stm

Google books is a huge project. They've got 1 million books on "full preview" and another million public domain. I've found links (available on my site) to 700 Bibles that can be downloaded for free (and that's not all). http://books.google.com

Internet Archive has different types of content (audio and video) but not as many books. I have found 190 different Bibles freely available for download. http://www.archive.org/.

I know a friend whose book is posted on Google Books as a "preview." Many times one can search and use his book (it is a reference) just as though one owned a copy. The preview is limited, but if it won't show the page you want today, simply try again tomorrow (the pages shown change from time to time).

It appears that the settlement is supposed to deal with this issue. But some question why the US Authors' Guild and the Association of American Publishers are assuming to speak for all published authors. And I wonder why my friend (who is the copyright owner of his work) had no say in this online publishing of his work!

For those of us who want to read out-of-copyright works, these online digital libraries are already a blessing. But clearly there are many ethical, legal and financial considerations in digitizing all the rest of the works.