More on Google Books

Sergey Brin wrote an opinion article late last week for the New York Times titled "A Library to Last Forever." The same article appeared a day later as a blog post titled A Tale of 10,000,000 Books on the official Google blog. The post is essentially a defense of Google Books and the recent settlement they have reached with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.
In the post, Brin talks about a "black hole" of information printed after 1923. These books are not in the public domain, but are frequently out of print and increasingly difficult to find. Brin argues that Google Books is making important parts of the "world's collective knowledge and cultural heritage" available. I don't think any of us would argue the potential for the positive impact of Google Books on the way research is conducted. I am more concerned about what Google Books means for future mass digitization projects.
Brin states that "If Google Books is successful, others will follow." But what about the large startup costs? To Google's credit, they are the only ones with the means and the drive to even attempt such a large-scale book digitization project. But with the expense being so high, will there ever be anyone else with both the means and drive to create another digital collection? It seems to me that it would be highly unlikely, especially if Google Books is successful. Who wants to take on a giant when the cost of entrance is so high?
While I don't pretend to know everything about the settlement, it appears that it will create a registry of rights for books which helps to identify the rights holders for individual works and to make obtaining permission and assigning appropriate revenue to the rights holders easier. Again, such a registry would be very helpful, but how many entities exist with the kind of funding it would take to pay the appropriate fees and digitize the books?
And if Google Books is the only entity to attempt such a large-scale book digitization project, we find ourselves back where we started with the problems of inaccurate and misleading metadata. Brin addresses these issues briefly, only to say that Google is "working hard to address them."
In spite of all of my doubts, it is hard not to get swept up by Brin's call to save the literary works of the 20th century. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how Google Books affects the future of mass digitization projects. Meanwhile, Google would like us believe that they have found the answer.