Here I was, reading Lonely Planet Colombia to prep for my upcoming trip. I had found a couple of promising hostels, and selected the name of one of them to perform a google search. To my surprise, I couldn’t copy the name. I tried another selection. Still nothing. On the web, I got a slightly more helpful error “Not available for this book.”

I painstakingly typed in the words into Google, and continued on my way. This happened again and again, and I reluctantly migrated to other sources such as trip advisor. 

I presume that copy was disabled due to some misguided desire to prevent copyright infringement. But that fear misses the value of guides such as Lonely Planet. They’re more valuable than a random travel website because they promise to be curated. Sites that copy the content fail to copy the brand, the promise. And so in that sense, Lonely Planet has nothing to worry about. Now, if people no longer value that curation or are unwilling to pay for it, that’s a whole different problem.