Resistance Is Futile?

C.E. Petit has a lengthy post today on Amazon's Search Inside the Book, and why it has angered him and some of his clients. Bottom line, according to C.E.: "[T]his should have been done on an opt-in basis, not an opt-out basis." (From what I can tell, C.E. is jumping the gun thinking Amazon may have pulled the service; all the searches I ran over the weekend continue to include the Search Inside results.)

Also examining Search Inside, Jon Udell describes how the service adds value for the book owner—"Now the physical book I bought from Amazon is more valuable to me. Its printed index has been augmented by a vastly more capable online index."—while recognizing it's not hard to see how the technology could foster abuse. Jon's musings about whether and how such local search services will federate are quite fascinating too.