SAN FRANCISCO: Already facing a legal challenge for alleged copyright infringement, Google's crusade to build a digital library has now triggered a philosophical debate with an alternative project promising better online access to the world's books, art and historical documents.

The latest tensions revolve around Google's insistence on chaining the digital content to its Internet-leading search engine and the nine major libraries that have aligned themselves with the company. A splinter group called the Open Content Alliance favours a less restrictive approach to prevent mankind's accumulated knowledge from being controlled by a commercial entity, even if it is a company like Google that has embraced "Don't Be Evil" as its creed.

Grant

"You are talking about the fruits of our civilisation and culture. You want to keep it open and certainly don't want any company to enclose it," said Doron Weber, programme director of public understanding of science and technology for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The New York-based foundation has announced a $1 million grant to the Internet Archive, a leader in the Open Content Alliance, to help pay for digital copies of collections owned by the Boston Public Library, Getty Research Institute and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The works to be scanned include the personal library of John Adams, the second President of the U.S., and thousands of images from the Metropolitan Museum. The Sloan grant will be used also to scan a collection of anti-slavery material provided by the John Hopkins University Libraries and documents relating to the Gold Rush from a library at the University of California at Berkeley.

Coup

The deal is a coup for Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, a strident critic of the controls Google has imposed on its book-scanning initiative. "They don't want the books to appear in anyone else's search engine but their own, which is a little peculiar for a company that says its mission is to make information universally accessible," Mr. Kahle said.

Google's restrictions on its digital book copies stem in part from the company's decision to scan copyrighted material without explicit permission. Google wants to ensure only small excerpts from the copyrighted material appear online — snippets it believes fall under "fair use" protections of U.S. law. A group of authors and publishers have sued Google for copyright infringement in a year-old case that is wending its way through court.

In contrast, the Open Content Alliance will not scan copyrighted content unless it receives the permission of the copyright owner. Most of the roughly 100,000 books the alliance has scanned are works whose copyrights have expired.

Google has not said how many digital copies it has made since announcing its ambitious project two years ago. It will only acknowledge scanning more than 3,000 books a day — a rate that works out to more than a million annually. Google is footing a bill expected to exceed $100 million to make the digital copies — a commitment that appeals to many libraries.

A feature

The non-copyrighted material in Google's search engine can be downloaded and printed — a feature the company believes mirrors the goals of the Open Content Alliance. Although the Open Content Alliance depends on the Internet Archive to host its digital copies, other search engines are being encouraged to index the material too.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft, which run the two largest search engines behind Google, belong to the alliance — which has more than 60 members, mostly libraries and universities.

Google's contracts do not prevent participating libraries from making separate scanning arrangements with others, said a company spokeswoman. "We encourage the digitisation of more books by more organisations. It's good for readers, publishers, authors and libraries."

The motives behind Google's book-scanning initiative are not entirely altruistic. The company wants to stock its search engine with unique material to give people more reasons to visit its website, which is the hub of an advertising network that generated most of its $2-billion profit through the first nine months of this year.

Despite its ongoing support for the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft this month launched a book-scanning project to compete with Google. Like Google, Microsoft will not allow its digital copies to be indexed by other search engines.

All but one of the libraries contributing to Google are part of universities. They are Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, and Complutense of Madrid. — AP

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