Open Content Alliance - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Open Content Alliance (OCA) is a consortium of organizations contributing to a permanent, publicly accessible archive of digitized texts. Its creation was announced in October 2005 by Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

, the Internet Archive

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

, the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

, the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

and others. Scanning for the Open Content Alliance is administered by the Internet Archive

Internet Archive

, which also provides permanent storage and access through its website.

The OCA is, in part, a response to Google Book Search

Google Book Search

Google Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October...

, which was announced in October 2004. OCA's approach to seeking permission from copyright holders differs significantly from that of Google Book Search. OCA digitizes copyrighted works only after asking and receiving permission from the copyright holder ("opt-in"). By contrast, Google Book Search digitizes copyrighted works unless explicitly told not to do so ("opt-out"), and contends that digitizing for the purposes of indexing is fair use

Fair use

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...

.

Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

had a special relationship with the Open Content Alliance until May 2008. Microsoft joined the Open Content Alliance in October 2005 as part of its Live Book Search project. However, in May 2008 Microsoft announced it would be ending the Live Book Search project and no longer funding the scanning of books through the Internet Archive. Microsoft removed any contractual restrictions on the content they had scanned and they relinquished the scanning equipment to their digitization partners and libraries to continue digitization programs. Between about 2006 and 2008 Microsoft sponsored the scanning of over 750,000 books, 300,000 of which are now part of the Internet Archive's on-line collections.

Opposition to Google Book Settlement

Brewster Kahle

Brewster Kahle is a computer engineer, internet entrepreneur, activist, and digital librarian.- Biography :Kahle graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in computer science and engineering, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. The...

, the founder of the Open Content Alliance, has actively opposed the proposed Google Book Settlement. Saying, "Lets free the orphans, not have them pass from their legal limbo into a life controlled by Google" [sic]. The Open Content Alliance is a Member of the Open Book Alliance

Open Book Alliance

The Open Book Alliance is an organisation concerned about the mass digitization of books and opposed to the Google Book Settlement, which they believe could allow Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors’ Guild collectively "to monopolize the access, distribution and pricing...

Contributors

The following are contributors to the OCA:

Adobe Systems Incorporated
Boston Library Consortium
The Bancroft Library
The British Library
Columbia University Libraries
Emory University Library
European Archive
Getty Research Institute
Getty Research Institute
The Getty Research Institute , located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". A program of the J...
HP Labs
HP Labs
HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for Hewlett-Packard. The lab has some 600 researchersin seven locations throughout the world....
Indiana University Libraries
Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
Johns Hopkins University Libraries
McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Memorial University of Newfoundland, is a comprehensive university located primarily in St...
Missouri Botanical Garden
Missouri Botanical Garden
The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder Henry Shaw, a botanist and philanthropist.-History:...

MSN
MSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...
The National Archives
National Writers Union
National Writers Union
National Writers Union , founded on November 19, 1981, is the trade union in the United States for freelance and contract writers: journalists, book and short fiction authors, business and technical writers, web content providers, and poets...
Natural History Museum, London
National Library of Australia
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia is the largest reference library of Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the...
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media is an American media company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books and Web sites and produces conferences on computer technology topics...
Perseus Project
Perseus Project
The Perseus Project is a digital library project of Tufts University that assembles digital collections of humanities resources. It is hosted by the Department of Classics. It has suffered at times from computer hardware problems, and its resources are occasionally unavailable...
Prelinger Library
Prelinger Library
The Prelinger Library is a privately funded public library in San Francisco founded in 2004 and operated by Rick Prelinger and his spouse, Megan Shaw Prelinger. It features over 50,000 books, periodicals and pieces of print ephemera...

and Prelinger Archives
Prelinger Archives
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history...
Research Libraries Group
Research Libraries Group
The Research Libraries Group was a U.S.-based library consortium which developed the Eureka interlibrary search engine, the RedLightGreen database of bibliographic descriptions and ArchiveGrid, a database containing descriptions of archival collections...
Rice University Libraries
San Francisco Public Library
San Francisco Public Library
The San Francisco Public Library is a public library system serving the city of San Francisco. Its main library is located in San Francisco's Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street at Grove. The first public library of San Francisco officially opened in 1879, just 30 years after the California Gold...
Simon Fraser University Library
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
The Smithsonian Institution Libraries system comprises 20 libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. SIL's holdings include 1.5 million volumes as well as a wide array of digital resources. The collections focus primarily on science, art, history and...
Universided Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala
University of Alberta Libraries
University of British Columbia Library
University of British Columbia Library
The University of British Columbia Library is the library system of the University of British Columbia . In 2004, UBC Library ranked 22nd among members of the Association of Research Libraries....

University of California Libraries
University of California Libraries
The University of California operates the largest academic library system in the world. It manages more than 34 million items in 100 libraries on ten campuses. The purpose of these libraries is to assist research and instruction on the University of California campuses...
University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
University of Texas
University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
University of Virginia Library
Washington University
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Reddington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1967. The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to support educational and cultural institutions and to advance certain social and...
Xerox Corporation
Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
York University Library

Biodiversity Heritage Library, a cooperative project of:

American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
Harvard University Botany Libraries
Harvard University, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology
Missouri Botanical Garden
Missouri Botanical Garden
The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder Henry Shaw, a botanist and philanthropist.-History:...
Natural History Museum, London
The New York Botanical Garden
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, usually referred to as Kew Gardens, is 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses between Richmond and Kew in southwest London, England. "The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew" and the brand name "Kew" are also used as umbrella terms for the institution that runs...
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
The Smithsonian Institution Libraries system comprises 20 libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. SIL's holdings include 1.5 million volumes as well as a wide array of digital resources. The collections focus primarily on science, art, history and...

External links

News Articles

Scan This Book! (May 14, 2006 New York Times)
Microsoft To Join Book-Search Alliance (October 26, 2005 International Herald Tribune]
In Challenge to Google, Yahoo Will Scan Books (October 3, 2005 New York Times article)
Building the Universal Library (May 18, 2006 Search Engine Watch)
Google's Moon Shot: The quest for the universal library February 5, 2007 article in The New Yorker

Blog Posts

The Universal Library and Other Book Digitization Projects (Search Engine Watch)
Yahoo Search announcing Open Content Alliance

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Opposition to Google Book Settlement

Contributors

See also

External links