In the Attention Economy, you steal Attention by Borrowing Copyright

John Andrews pushes back Lessig on a book exec’s stealing of a few Google’s computers at a book expo:

It’s no longer about stealing the book and leaving someone the lesser, Mr. Lessig. That ceased to be important when Google started advertising in search results. It’s now about monetization of the process of publishing original works. Perhaps the Macmillan executive should have simply copied the powerpoint slides from those Googlers, and displayed them at his booth to draw a crowd interested in hearing what Google was doing. Once in the Macmillan booth, of course Macmillan could deliver the Macmillan anti-Google message.

John is right here. Looking at the free-to-air TV as an example, the TV stations rent copyrighted material, and exchanges them for the attention of the audience (plays ads). Unlike bloggers, who exist symbiotically with search engines, book publishers are big enough to hold their own. They could always roll their own search engines, and Google pays them for book search results. It would be no different from Google paying for satellite pics to go on Google Maps.

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Published:: 6.11.07 / 6pm

Category:: Thinking IT

apotheon 6.15.07 / 4pm

I’m afraid I have to disagree. I think John Andrews is missing the core point of what Lessig has to say about the difference between computers and copyrighted book content.

Specifically, he’s saying that the difference is that the publisher is taking something that directly deprives Google of that same thing, while what Google is doing is simply *making copies* of something that publishers aren’t using (commercially). There’s no deprivation. The publishers still have access to the content — in fact, they have *more* access to it now, because in addition to the manners in which they previously had access to it, they can now search it more easily for their own purposes, thanks to Google.

Chui 6.16.07 / 3pm

That’s somewhat like the “absentee landlord/squatter” view of property. It also smacks of “eminent domain”, whereas somebody who can make a more productive use of a fallow property can use it without consent.

It can work, but in general, the laws have tended towards absolute ownership rather than partial ownership of property.

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In the Attention Economy, you steal Attention by Borrowing Copyright

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