全球数字图书馆的未来

You can download the latest Dan Brown novel to your Kindle in even less time than it takes to forget the content. You can equally easily obtain an audio recording of Pride and Prejudice or track a reference in The Wealth of Nations. Wherever I am in the world, I can consult any economics article from the 1990s. The prospect of a universal online library is potentially the most exciting development for readers and scholars for generations.
你可以把丹布朗的最新小说下载到你的Kindle上，所用时间甚至比忘掉内容需要的时间更短。你可以同样轻松地获得《傲慢与偏见》的音频资料或查阅《国富论》中的参考文献。无论在全球哪个角落，我都可以查阅上世纪90年代以来的所有的经济学文献。对于读者和学者来说，建立全球在线图书馆的前景可能是几十年来最激动人心的进展了。
　　
But if you have done any or all of these things, you will also have experienced frustrations. You can get an e-book of Dan Brown or Jane Austen, but books that are neither very old nor very new are harder to find. Bizarrely, you can easily get economic articles so long as they are neither very old nor very new.
但如果你做过上述事情中的一件或全部，你也会经历过其中的沮丧。你可以得到丹布朗或简奥斯汀图书的电子版本，但那些既不是非常古老也不是非常新的图书就较难找到。奇怪的是，如果是经济学著作，只要它们既不是非常古老也不是非常新，你很容易就能找到。
　　
On November 13 last year, two leading associations representing American authors and publishers put forward to a New York District Court a revised settlement on the digitisation of books with Google. The revision was the latest twist in a class-action lawsuit filed against Google in 2005 alleging that the search group's plan to build a global digital library trampled on authors and publishers' intellectual rights.
去年11月13日，代表美国作家和出版商的两家主要协会，向纽约地区法院递交了与谷歌(Google)就图书数字化达成的修改后的和解协议。这是2005年针对谷歌提起的集体诉讼案的最新转折。诉讼指控谷歌建造全球数字图书馆的计划侵犯了作家和出版商的知识产权。
　　
As with anything that uses the US legal system, the issue is likely to drag on for years. The proposed deal is a first step towards a global library, but an extremely small one, whose main effect is to make some out-of-print books more available.
就像所有通过美国法律体系解决的事情一样，这一案件可能会拖延数年之久。拟定的协议是迈向全球图书馆的第一步，但也是极小的一步，主要效果就是让一些绝版书籍更容易获得。
　　
The court case is an unsatisfactory way of deciding an important issue. The principal potential beneficiaries from the rapid extension of digital access – the reading public and authors struggling to get their work published – are not parties to the case. The dispute, and the forum of resolution, is American, but the practical effects will be worldwide.
诉诸法庭并不是解决重大问题的一种令人满意的方式。数字图书馆快速扩张的主要潜在受益人——读者群体和难以出版其作品的作者——不是当事方。纠纷的发生地和裁决地是美国，但实际影响将是全球性的。
　　
The arbiter is a junior judge, Denny Chin. The underlying legal issue is how copyright should be interpreted in a technological context that the 18th-century framers of the concept could not have imagined. There are many issues to be debated in determining policy for a digital era but the semantics of what constitutes a copy is not one of them.
仲裁者是初任法官陈卓光。根本的法律问题是，在18世纪提出版权概念的人不可能想象得到的技术背景下，应如何解释版权的概念。在制定数字时代政策的过程中，有许多问题有待讨论，但有关何为拷贝的语义学不在其中。
　　
So the quality of argument falls far short of its significance. The few European contributions proclaim lofty ideals; the French and German submissions are full of windy rhetoric, expressing indignation that the works of Goethe and Voltaire should be copied by pesky Californians: they assert a human right to free access to information although free access to information is exactly what they wish to deny. In practice, since the settlement applies essentially to books in English, it potentially marginalises further the literature of other languages. The British government has nothing to say: the digital Britain of Lord Carter's report twitters and blogs, goes online to renew its driving licences and watch television, and to engage in high frequency securities trading, but has little use for books.
因此辩论的质量远未体现出其重要性。为数不多的欧洲文献宣扬着崇高理想；法国和德国的作品满是空洞的辞藻，表达对讨厌的加利福尼亚人拷贝歌德(Goethe)和伏尔泰(Voltaire)作品的不满：他们宣称人类有权免费获取信息，尽管免费获取信息正是他们希望反对的。实际上，由于和解协议主要适用于英语图书，它可能会使其它语言的作品进一步边缘化。英国政府无话可说：卡特勋爵(Lord Carter)撰写的《数字英国》报告上了twitter和博客，在线更新驾照和观看电视，从事高频证券交易，但对图书几乎没用。
　　
The principal American contributions are barely disguised expressions of diverse economic interests. Competing software businesses are afraid of Google's dominance. Publishers fear any departure from their existing business model and so, with less cause, do authors. Established vested interests will win the short-term political battle. But the market will destroy these vested interests in the end, as has happened in music. Digital media is the future and two decades from now the book business will look very different.
美国的主要文献是各种经济利益几乎不加掩饰的表达。彼此竞争的软件企业害怕谷歌的主导地位。出版商唯恐偏离现有的业务模式，而作家也是如此，只是理由要少一些。已有的既得利益集团将在短期赢得政治斗争。但市场最终将摧毁这些既得利益，就如音乐行业一样。未来是数字媒体的天下，20年过后，图书业务看上去将截然不同。
　　
What is needed is a public option. The great libraries of the past – from Oxford's Bodleian Library to Andrew Carnegie's small town facilities – have made incalculable contributions to scholarship and economic progress. These outcomes were the result of philanthropic and state action, which facilitated private enterprise. Comprehensive digitisation of printed media will cost a few hundred million dollars – large enough to constitute a commercial entry barrier, so the fear of Google is justified – but tiny relative to existing global library budgets, far less the potential economic benefits of wider reading and better scholarship. The debate should move to a larger, more international forum.
目前需要的是公众选择。过去的伟大图书馆——从牛津大学(Oxford)的博德利图书馆(Bodleian Library)到卡耐基(Andrew Carnegie)的小城图书馆——为学术和经济发展做出了不可估量的贡献。这些成果是慈善和政府活动的结果，促进了私营企业的发展。将印刷媒体全面数字化将耗资数亿美元——规模之大足以形成商业壁垒，因此对谷歌的担忧是合理的——但与现有全球图书馆的预算相比却微不足道，远低于扩大阅读面和提高学术水平带来的潜在经济好处。这场辩论应该走向规模更大、更国际化的论坛。