Intelligent content, not infringed copyright

ARTICLE: "We're Google. So Sue Us. For a Company on the Cutting Edge, It's Part of Doing Business," by Katie Hafner, New York Times, 23 October 2006, p. C1.

A rather self-satisfied story about lawyers working for Google who think they're cutting edge because they run around creating run-arounds on copyright infringement. Google thinks that stockpiling stuff, inert content really, is what's going to make them the 21st-century equivalent of Microsoft, but I think it's misguided.

The real content worth stockpiling is intelligent content--something that does something, reports something, senses something, organizes something, determines something. In a super-connected world, it's the rules that are the most most important--and thus the most intelligent--content.

Google should be about creating real value and serious connectivity--in short, empowering people. Simply trolling the web for everything they think they can snatch and get away with ("We rely on the same safe harbor that YouTube relies on, so we're fairly familiar with the issues.") is not the strategic leadership they imagine it to be. Google should simply aim higher than YouTube. This is bottom feeding. It has too much money and too much talent to be defined by this effort.

Key words I get, but simply appropriating every book in history I don't get.

"Just do it" can't become "just steal it."

Comments

[Kyle]

The discussion on "inert" vs. "intelligent" content is an entirely separate issue from the criticism at hand.

As for misappropriating content: you're missing the issue (and the fact that, to date, Google has prevailed in the legal cases surrounding their book search). Authors lose far more sales from no one having heard of their books than anything else, and Google's victories thus far are based on the fact that they're in compliance with the law by providing a mechanism for copyright owners to ensure their works are removed. (Also please note that Google is purchasing YouTube.)

Why one would want to be removed from the index, I couldn't possibly understand, as it simply makes one's works less relevant to the global conversation. To relate it back to PNM concepts, it's choosing to disconnect. Being available and relevant means you're in the Core. Being disconnected and obscure means you're in the Gap.

I know where I'd rather be.