News: 'A Better Pencil' - Inside Higher Ed

News: 'A Better Pencil' - Inside Higher Ed:

"Here’s my objection to the Google book project. First, I think it’s great to digitize as much nondigital text as possible. I take advantage of many of the online databases with digitized newspapers, early printed books, and manuscripts. What I don’t like is that Google is poised to monopolize text. No one entity should have that kind of power over the word. Not only does Google intend to profit from this kind of control (it answers to its stockholders, not to the public), it would have the power to manipulate the text under its control, deciding who can and cannot see it, what can be displayed, what can be erased."