Copyright Protection

Lots of talk about Google providing scans of books.  I thought this was an interesting (and valid) comparison.  The music industry should also take note.

On Oct. 19, David Drummond, a Google vice president and general counsel, outlined the company's stance in an e-mail:

"It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous, even though they can easily remove their books from the program at any time," he wrote. "The history of technology is replete with advances that first met wide opposition, later found wide acceptance, and finally were widely regarded as having been inevitable all along.

"In 1982, for instance, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America famously told a Congressional panel that 'the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.' But Sony, makers of the original Betamax, stood its ground, the Supreme Court ruled that copying a TV show to watch it later was legal, and today videotapes and DVDs produce the lion's share of the film industry's revenue."