[Upd-discuss] Re: Consumer Group Raises Concerns about Google Print Library

[Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza]

On the contrary. It rather seems that NCL is more concerned on protecting
the corporate interests of the information industry/corporations against
the interests of a particular corporation of the same industry, in this
case Google. Reading between the lines is more of an internal vendetta
within the industry.

But human beings, and particularly librarians and information workers,
should be more concerned of the real censoring role copyright has played.
Since it was invented by the early information industry of the
copists/scribes, who then controlled and censored the
information/knowledge access, they were of course accordingly "concerned"
of the printing quality of publications that Gutenberg's mobile types
technology revolutionized back then (was the guterbergization phenomenon
the current googlezation of our days?). But NCL is not challenging the
very same copyright system.

"To protect the fairness to authors"? Which fairness when the copyright
system rips off blatantly the moral rights of authors? By law they have to
surrender them to the corporations/information industry, otherwise they
would not get published, in the Gutenberg galaxy. Which fairness if when
authors live out of their royalties, if the corporations give them  3.00%
of the whole profit quota, that is TOO MUCH. On the other hand, librarians
could as well begin charging royalties to authors (or the owners of
copyright, in this case the corporations) because thanks to the patient
and dedicated work of librarians their works are stuck, promoted,
diffused, disseminated, maintained, preserved, and read by many as many
can get them in libraries. Then, as Blanca Calvo has suggested, authors
(or better put, the corporations who usurpate, plunderer and predate the
moral rights of authors with their opressive apparatus, crime made virtue:
copyright) would have to pay a whole lot much more to librarians and
libraries for that FREE OF CHARGE marketization service librarians do of
all the works they select (Read more:
<http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00003658/>). So the worldwide librarians
of the world are more worried and troubled because the
little/ritchie/ritchie pey-per-access informational/cognitive corporations
will lose some little margins of profits of their unmeasurably huge
general quota. But they are confused. They serve corporations' desires,
not library and information users'. Do they receive a chunk of the
bribery? We should investigate and attack the problem on those grounds.
And once we address the phenomenon as it is, then we investigate and
attack the problem of finding the most suitable technological solution to
that problem.

"Cultural selectivity"? Librarians are the selectors of what is being
stuck in their libraries. If they use Google or their grandmother's 
scanning system, that is not the point. Current librarians must preserve
humankind's memory with whatever the technology is more adequate for such
a fundamental task, as our predecessors did with clay tables, papyrus
rolls, parchments, vitelas, palimpsestus, wax codixes, silice, or
whatever.

"Exclusion and censorship"? Librarians are the ones who exclude or censor
information or knowledge to be accessible in their libraries. Librarians
are the ones who will rather put in jail a user who will photocopy from
the title page to the corollary a PhD thesis/diss, in order to comply with
the "law", instead of giving access to all the worldwide knowledge free
and free of charge for all. Librarians in the past 7, 000 years of
recorded history are the ones who, yes, they have made a lot of efforts to
give access to the world's heritage, but at the same they have fallen in
the game of the historical controllers, manipulators and censors of
knowledge and information. Librarians, as we can witness, are more promted
to comply with the law, which by the way is more inclined defending the
interests of businesses, and corporations than users. But if 7, 000 and
more years are not enough, it is about time for humankind and particularly
librarians, to challenge and create new laws which put users in the center
of the legislation. It is about time human beings and specially librarians
fight to put all the recorded human communication in the public domain,
free, free of charge, socially equally for all to access, use, play,
amuse, or whatever.



Librarians from age to age, time to time getting on board of the wagons of
vested interests of businesses and corporations moguls of the
information/knowledge industries, simply play against the interests of
library and information users; and even they cite Ranghanattan's laws
everywhere. The whole copyright system is the worst threat to humankind.
It is the bomb to the perpetual state of stupidity the pey/per/access
charlatans in the information/knowledge industries are building with the
complascency of the vast majority of librarians and information workers,
which sooner than later will explode. 

But librarians and information workers of the world should stand up with a
clear vision working and fighting for the interests of library and
information users, and specially the working class users , the
underserved, the excluded, the non served, the deprived (the affluent ones
 you bet they have a bigger library at home than any average US public
library). And users of the library and information services in any public
repository of knowledge are users of a vital service to improve their
intellectual, educational and cultural conditions of working, or
surviving, they are not consumers.

Furthermore, librarians and information workers should join forces with
other social groups to challenge the whole copyright system, the whole
patent system, the whole anti-human system which deprives authors from
their moral rights, and then commercializes their intellect in their name,
and they price it at an EXA-exponential power where only the affluent ones
can PAY/PER/ACCESS. This whole insane pey/per/access society should be one
of the main objectives to challenge, reform or overthrow. More than a
concern to raise in favor of library and information users, it should be
part of the mission, mistique and ethos of each librarian and information
worker in the world. Until then we will continue to be deludged in the eye
of sterile, fatuos, empty vortrexes of philistine discourses by the
self-called anointed gurus, the charlatans of all times.

But...

"to find a pinch of truth floating in oceans 
of confusion and deceit
we have to pay attention, be brave, dedicated, skeptical
...
otherwise any charlatan will pass in front of us
and will lead us to the abyss of stupidity
 like taking a candy to children..."

--Carl Sagan, US astronomer and biologist
in The Demon-haunted World: Science as Candle in the Dark

Zapopan Muela

--- "Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@UILLINOIS.EDU> wrote:

> "In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary
> subcommittees overseeing intellectual property issues, the nation's
> oldest consumer advocacy group...warned...that the project, which will
> resume scanning on November 1, 2005 poses dramatic threats to the
> principle of copyrights; fairness to authors; and cultural selectivity,
> exclusion, and censorship."
> 
> Press release:
> 
> http://nclnet.org/news/2005/printlibrary_10132005.htm
> 
> Copies of letters to Congress:
> 
> http://nclnet.org/news/2005/NCL_Smith.pdf
> http://nclnet.org/news/2005/NCL_Hatch.pdf
> 
> Bernie Sloan
> Senior Information Systems Consultant
> Consortium of Academic & Research Libraries in Illinois
> 616 E. Green Street, Suite 213
> Champaign, IL  61820-5752
> 
> Phone: (217) 333-4895
> Fax:   (217) 265-0454
> E-mail: bernies@uillinois.edu
> 


Zapopan Muela
----------------------------- v -------------------------------
"Tiranos y autócratas han entendido siempre que el alfabetismo, 
el conocimiento, los libros y los periódicos son un peligro 
en potencia. Pueden inculcar ideas independientes e incluso
de rebeldía en las cabezas de sus súbditos.
----------------------------- v -------------------------------
"Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, 
learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. 
They can put independent and even rebelious ideas to the heads 
of their subjects."
----------------------------- v -------------------------------
-- Sagan, Carl (1997). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle
in the Dark : El mundo y sus demonios: La ciencia como una luz en la 
oscuridad. México: Planeta, p. 390; New York: Ballantine Books, p. 362.


	
		
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