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Publishers could be the Internet piracy boom's next victims after the music industry, but the Web might also be their salvation, the head of the International Publishers Association said Thursday.
Ana Maria Cabanellas told AFP at the world's biggest book fair in Frankfurt, Germany that the industry felt it was under attack from Internet search engine Google and its drive to post the world's books online.
"Everybody thinks that everything on the Internet should be free," she said.
"It's one thing to have free access and it's another thing to make everything free. It should be the decision of the owner of the content."
Google has riled newspaper and book publishers with its two-year-old library project, a program on its Google Book Search site that allow users to access a limited number of pages from copyrighted books of authors, and download entire books whose copyrights have expired, such as classic novels.
Its library partners include Oxford University, Harvard, Stanford and the New York Public Library, which have granted access to their vast collections.
Google has argued that it respects copyrights but publishers in the United States and Europe have taken the giant to court, seeing the program as a potential threat on a par with illegal music download sites.
Cabanellas said Google's practice of asking publishers to "opt out" of participation in its project or accept that they have given their tacit consent to use their books was unfair.
"They've inverted the normal business relationship," she said.
Cabanellas said the publishing industry planned to present a program Friday at the fair which would allow all online content to be linked to readily visible terms of reproduction, including publishers' demands for payment.
She said such measures would allow publishing houses -- particularly small and medium-sized firms -- to harness the power of the Web to lower costs and expand their reach.
"If you're a publisher, you're always a publisher, it doesn't matter what the platform is," said Cabanellas, who is also the president of the Latin American professional publishing houses Editorial Heliasta and Claridad.
"On the Internet, you find many kinds of content but the content must have the input of the publisher. If you really do good work, then your input will be recognized, just like on paper."
Cabanellas said that as people increasingly turn to the Internet for information on matters as weighty as finances and health, quality control was a major priority.
She said publishers' "brand names" could provide a hallmark that the content was trustworthy.
"That is what we have been doing for centuries," she said.
Cabanellas, an Argentine national, said the Internet offered a cost-free global showcase for new publications, and a far cheaper means of distribution.
"Printing on demand is a very good opportunity for small publishers, even for big publishers, to try out the chances of a book," she said.
Printing on demand allows clients to download books and have them printed locally, eliminating shipping costs.
"You sell the book worldwide without exporting it physically," Cabanellas explained.
The World Bank, for example, uses printing on demand for many of its publications, allowing it to produce only the number of copies that will actually be read, Cabanellas said.
She noted that printing on demand via the Internet also allowed publishers to keep their backlists alive, ensuring that books never go out of print.
"If you look on Amazon, there are some books that it says it will take one week to get them," she said, referring to the online retailer. "Most of them are printed on demand."
Cabanellas was re-elected Thursday as president of the International Publishers Association, which represents 78 national, regional and specialist publishers associations in 66 countries. It lobbies for copyright protection and freedom to publish.
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AFPEntertainment-literature-Germany-publishing-Internet
AFP 051712 GMT 10 06
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