What on earth are Google up to with Google Print? They are apparently scared witless by the legal threats of the publishing industry, and are alienating the very people who might support the project.
A case in point: Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. First published in 1859, this book is as public domain as public domain can get. Project Gutenberg has had a copy available online for some years now, among several other works by Darwin.
So let us turn to Google Print, who have as their stated ambition to “organize the world’s information” and of “putting book content where you can find it most easily”. Great idea. So we ask a pertinent question: “Can I read an entire library book online?”
And Google have an anwser for this:
If the book has no copyright restrictions and is considered public domain, then you can browse through the entire book. For library books still under copyright, you’ll only be able to see a few sentences. Books that are from publishers will allow you to view a limited number of pages. In general, Google Print is designed to help you discover books, not read them from start to finish. It’s like going to a bookstore and browsing – only with a Google twist.
Fair enough. Even if the intention is not for books to be read from start to finish, they probably wouldn’t mind if we do for books clearly in the public domain. So we try and find our good friend Charlie Darwin’s The Origin of Species:
Books 1 – 100 with 145000 pages on The Origin of Species.
Goodie. Most of these results are clearly references and bibliographies, but we start off with the Signet Classic reprint of 2003. Public domain text, but the book itself is copyrighted, so we can just see a few pages. “Like going to a bookstore and browsing”, as Google said.
But where are the original copies of Darwin’s book? Certainly the universities have several copies lying around, something unhindered by copyright? Isn’t that what univeristy libraries are for, sharing information?
While searching for Darwin we find Benjamin G. Ferris’s A New Theory of the Origin of Species. Not in the least comparable to Darwin’s work, but this was published in 1883, so after more than 120 years no country in the world would claim the book to be covered by copyright.
But what’s this? We see only a scrap of paper with some text on it, Google’s tribute to literal design. “Where’s the rest of this book?” And Google answers:
Library books still in copyright: For books that we have scanned from a library which are still in copyright, you will only be able to view the bibliographic information and a few short sentences of text around your search term.
Clearly this is rubbish. 120 years after it was published, and 114 years after the death of the author (he apparently died in 1891) this book is very much in the public domain.
Which means that, in their effort to appease the publishing industry, all Google have given us is a glorified Amazon.
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