Google and the World Brain Page #6

If you, in Silicon Valley,

you have another job,

which is you're building

this new life form

that's going to take over the world

and Google is providing

the memories for its brain

or the other companies

are providing the memories,

and this is something

that's openly talked about.

It's all human knowledge

in books and out of books

woven together

into a single entity

that's accessible by anybody,

anywhere in the world, any time.

And that "all knowledge"

is transformative.

It really kicks up the civilisation

in our society into another level.

Shortly after the launch

of Google Books,

in different events, I ran

into Larry Page and Sergey Brin

and had this brief exchange

with them about the potential.

And, you know,

there was a characteristic

Google-founder response,

which was a kind of glint

in their eyes and a smile

and the sense that this was

just the beginning

of something much bigger than even

you at this point can imagine.

At Harvard, we only permitted Google

to digitise books

in the public domain,

but the other research libraries

that Google first went to

permitted Google to digitise books

covered by copyright.

As soon as you get

into the copyright area,

things get rapidly complicated.

We're allowing Google

to scan all of our books,

those in the public domain

and those still in copyright.

We believe it is legal,

ethical and a noble endeavour

that will transform our society.

Legal because we believe

copyright law allows us fair use

of the millions of books

that are being digitised.

Fair use is a piece of American

copyright law that allows us

to make copies without

ever asking any permission,

without paying any fee

for certain carved-out uses.

I happen to think Google's

fair use defence is strong.

One of the things that courts

have done,

over the last decade or so,

is decided that search engines,

who routinely make copies

of information,

are making fair uses when they do it

in order to help people

find information

that they are looking for.

One of the things Google

has done is provide links

to places where you can

buy the book.

They scanned, but they did not

release the copy.

You could not search,

except for key words.

You could not see a page,

except for snippets.

They were trying to allow

indexing and searching,

without allowing people

to get copies.

And we will protect

all copyrighted materials,

your work in that archive.

Let me repeat that.

I guarantee you we will protect

all copyrighted materials.

I assure you we understand

that providing public access

to materials and copyright,

particularly those still in print,

would be unlawful.

One of the things that you need

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