In the Google worldview, content is individually valueless. No one page is more important than the next; the value lies in the page view. And a page view is a page view, regardless of whether the page in question has a picture of a cat, a single link to another site, or the full text of Freakonomics. When all you're selling is ad space, the value shifts from the content to the viewer. And ultimately the content is valued at nothing. And here, finally, is the larger problem posed by Google's actions. Books are not in any important sense user-centric. Whether or not a book has readers matters little. Books stand on their own, over time, as ideas and creations. In the world of books, it is the ideas and the authors that matter most, not the readers. That is why the copyright exists in the first place, to protect the value of these created works, a value which Google is trying mightily to deny.
Google and Its Enemies
The much-hyped project to digitize 32 million books sounds like a good idea. Why are so many people taking shots at it?
by Jonathan V. Last
The Weekly Standard
12/10/2007, Volume 013, Issue 13
Emphasis added to the above quote. If a book has no readers, does it really have value? Is it the potential of readers (somewhere at some point far off in the long tail) that gives value to a book? By the very act of publishing (in the traditional mediated manner of print or other "authorities") there is at least one reader (the publisher/editor). In the world of Web 2.0 publishing creation happens and maybe no one ever sees it (hello out there, is anyone reading this? If you are, thank you! I give you value!), does that have value? I wonder.
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