This is big news about a big idea and big money. Google’s plan to digitize all of the world’s books dates back nearly to the company’s founding. It’s an idea said to be dear to co-founder Larry Page’s heart and dear to company coffers as well. The Wall Street Journal’s article on Tuesday’s court ruling cites a knowledgeable estimate suggesting that Google has pumped several hundred million dollars into the project to date, and the company is believed to have scanned its way through about 10% of its goal of some 150 million books.

 

The sheer scale of the project is staggering, and when you begin to factor in the context of what is potentially at stake, the whole enterprise becomes almost difficult to adequately conceptualize. What would it mean to have a virtual library containing all of the world’s books? Is the world’s literary inheritance a public good? If it is, then what are the implications of having that literary inheritance safeguarded by a private entity? Is safeguarding the same as owning? Is ownership implied by the act of scanning and hosting?

 

That’s just skimming the surface, and we’re contemplating a deep, deep pool here. Google, however, plunged in boldly years ago—improvising answers to new questions as they arose. The rest of the world, then, has been left on the shore to play catch-up and belatedly shout, hey, that’s not the universal library we had in mind. Now that the court system has called a timeout of sorts, it’s perhaps worth taking a moment to consider just what exactly we do have in mind for the universal library—if not the Google version.

 

Or maybe it’s easier to start with what we don’t like.

 

This week’s ruling echoes concerns previously voiced by a motley opposition that includes the Department of Justice, copyright lawyers, academics, Amazon, Microsoft, and a coterie of foreign governments. Much of the criticism centers on the ideas that 1) the Google library will come to constitute a monopoly and 2) that a structure allowing Google to charge for access to potentially millions of “orphan” books that the company has not secured the rights to (e.g., because the holder of those rights is unknown or cannot be found) violates copyright laws. The federal judge who heard the case wrote that the deal Google had reached with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers threatened to give the company “a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission.”

 

On the face of it, this seems an eminently reasonable concern, and the court ruling clearly leaves open the possibility of allowing a different—i.e., less sweeping—agreement between Google and the author and publisher groups. Indeed, Judge Denny Chin readily acknowledged that “the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many,” but he held that the arrangement under consideration would “simply go too far.”

 

But following Judge Chin’s reasoning, we inevitably arrive at the big money question: how far is far enough for Google but not too far for its rivals, its critics, and the courts?  The problem here is in the fact that Google, a private enterprise, already has a huge stake in the universal library project, and private enterprises are in the business of making money. Google is not in the business of getting stuck with the bill for a billion dollar public works project, and thus, they’re not likely to be content with a much less favorable arrangement.

 

But if we’ve reached a stalemate and Google’s plan remains blocked, who will pick up the project? The tech firm has had a number of partners (university libraries and non-profits) lending hands thus far, but I’d wager that none of them has several hundred million dollars to invest in the process. Does any public entity or group of entities have the resources to even consider the project? The Hathi Trust and the National Digital Public Library have made, respectively, steps and gestures in that direction, but neither has the scope of ambition nor the resources that Google commands on a bad day.

 

These aren't questions with quick and easy answers, and a thorough consideration of the issues involved is beyond the scope of a blog post. But as food for thought, I’d like to suggest two historical models of getting unprecedentedly large things done in the ostensible public interest. One: the completion of a transcontinental railroad network in the 19^th century. Two: the Manhattan project.

 

Both projects involved huge undertakings and engaged the pre-eminent forces of their times; both products changed the course of history; and both processes left very controversial legacies.  I think there's a pattern here.