MSN Book Search Joins Yahoo in Open Content Alliance
MSN is now getting into the book scanning and indexing game along with Google Print, Yahoo, and a handful of European groups with MSN Book Search. MSN Search will soon be launching MSN Book Search, digitizing the content from books, academic materials, periodicals and other print resources.
MSN Search is planning to launch an initial beta of MSN Book Search next year, when MSN will be joining the Open Content Alliance. Along with Yahoo, MSN will work with the Open Content Alliance to scan and digitize publicly available print materials, as well as work with copyright owners to legally scan protected materials.
From MSN : MSN will first make available books that are in the public domain and is working with the Internet Archive to digitize the material. MSN will then work to extend its offering to other types of offline content. The digitized content will primarily be print material that has not been copyrighted, and Microsoft will clearly respect all copyrights and work with each partner providing the information to work out mutually agreeable protections for copyrights.
The Open Content Alliance was conceived by the Internet Archive and Yahoo this year as a copyright friendly way to offer the world’s culture of books in digital format.
Google is also working on its own digital scanned book index at Google Print. Under controversy due to publishers and authors not too happy about Google monetizing their copyrighted works without asking permission (Google offers an opt-out option), Google has defined their mission as being “dedicated to helping the world find information, and there’s too much information in books that cannot yet be found online. We think you should be able to search through every word of every book ever written, and come away with a list of relevant books to buy or find at your local library. We aim to make that happen, but to do so we’ll need to build and maintain an index containing all this information.”
Between MSN, Google, Yahoo and gas prices will the digitizing of books lead to an end of the Book Mobile?
