Today, at the push of a button, you can download and print the whole of Dante"s Divine Comedy, using only a computer, an Internet connection, a paving stone of paper and a small bucket of ink. Technically, the service is free, although it would be easier and cheaper simply to buy the book, which could then be read in the bath, while saving on printer cartridges and trees.
The new service is the latest step in the stated goal of Google, the Internet search engine, "to organize the world"s information and make it universally accessible and useful" and, although few may be rushing to print out the Digitized Dante, it marks an important development in world literature. For some, making books available online for free download represents a paradise found; others, including a number of worried publishers and writers, fear it may point the way to the ninth circle of hell. Google"s Book Search service is just one part of the Library Project, in which the Internet engine has teamed up with libraries around the world, including the Bodleian in Oxford, to digitize collections and make millions of books available and searchable online.
At first sight, the notion of
a limitless digital library
seems irresistible, a single, free repository accessible from every corner of the globe. Partners in the Library Project say the system will enable users to access not just the classics, but also much more obscure works: forgotten novels, scientific accounts, illustrations and neglected poetry. Moribund books may be brought back to life. Librarians are often frustrated at the unseen gems in their collections gathering dust. Now the whole lot can be digitally stacked on an endless virtual shelf, to be browsed by anyone with a computer mouse.
The problem lies not with digitalizing dead or undead books, but the potential danger to those that still have commercial life in them in the form of copyright Google is quick to point out that the books available for download through Book Search are all out of copyright. Indeed, while European law allows copyright to expire 70 years after an author"s death, the new service does not offer anything published later than the mid-19th century. Some publishers, however, see the availability of free books for digital download as the thin end of a very large wedge that could split literature by undernuning copyright itself. Last year the Association of American Publishers filed suit against Google claiming that by scanning 100 per cent of a book(to make it searchable by word)the company is infringing copyright, even if only a small excerpt is then available for free.
Silence is golden in a library; but the law of copyright is beyond price.
单选题
Dante"s Divine Comedy is mentioned in Paragraph 1 to illustrate