Yahoo Enters Online Book Wars; Amazon Next?

by Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 10/3/2005

The book scanning wars got more heated this morning with the news that Google archrival Yahoo is partnering with libraries, software companies, and not-profit organizations to develop its own book scanning project that will provide open access to materials at opencontentalliance.org. And even as that initiative is being launched, word is circulating that Amazon is nearing an announcement about a new service that will involve micropayments for reading parts of books online.

In addition to Yahoo, other key players in the Open Content Alliance include The Internet Archive, Adobe, the University of California, the University of Toronto, that National Archives of the U.K., HP Labs and O'Reilly Media. The OCA aims to scan public domain works and selected copyrighted materials into a database that can be indexed by others. The project will begin by scanning titles housed at the University of California and University of Toronto.

The OCA has drawn some clear distinctions between its project and that of Google Print and Google Library, not the least of which is that it will only include copyrighted works for which it has the permission of the copyright holder. The OCA will also offer up the full text of work, not only Google's infamous snippets.

AAP spokesperson Judy Platt said the association is "very encouraged" by what it has heard about OCA so far. "This is exactly the right approach in that the rights of creators are respected, and the creators can determine how their works are used." Random House senior v-p of corporate development Richard Sarnoff said Random "appreciated Yahoo's approach to digitizing copyrighted materials," and that the publisher looked forward to having conversations about how the parties can work together in the future.