If there's one thing that Yahoo! knows how to do it's building effective partnerships with media players. The announcement of the Yahoo!-sponsored Open Content Alliance that aims to counter Google's library scanning efforts underscores that it pays to play nicely with some of today's leading content archivists. The OCA has openness, voluntary participation by publishers and a global set of participants on its side to help to accelerate its efforts. But as powerful as its proposition may be there are many consortia that have fallen by the wayside as others with fewer vested interests to negotiate sped along. Google may have a "sandbox bully" image to contend with at the moment but there's nothing to say who's really going to build the better sandcastle.

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