Comments on: Change in Google Book Search Guidelines for Public Domain Books http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2009/01/30/change-in-google-book-search-guidelines-for-public-domain-books/ ShafTek.org = SHAFranovich TECHnologies Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:41:13 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Yakov Shafranovich http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2009/01/30/change-in-google-book-search-guidelines-for-public-domain-books/comment-page-1/#comment-50961 Yakov Shafranovich Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:18:24 +0000 http://www.shaftek.org/?p=591#comment-50961 Peter Suber (of Open Access News) has <a href="http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/01/testing-googles-restrictions-on-google.html" rel="nofollow">an excellent post from two years ago about the restrictions on Google Books</a>. He mentions among other things a direct response from Google that clear states that these terms are not legally binding but rather are suggestions: <blockquote>We have gotten this question in the past. The front matter of our PDF books is not a EULA [end user license agreement]. We make some requests, but we are not trying to legally bind users to those requests. We've spent (and will continue to spend) a lot of time and money on Book Search, and we hope users will respect that effort and not use these files in ways that make it harder for us to justify that expense (for example, by setting up the ACME Public Domain PDF Download service that charges users a buck a book and includes malware in the download). Rather than using the front matter to convey legal restrictions, we are attempting to use it to convey what we hope to be the proper netiquette for the use of these files. </blockquote> Peter Suber (of Open Access News) has an excellent post from two years ago about the restrictions on Google Books. He mentions among other things a direct response from Google that clear states that these terms are not legally binding but rather are suggestions:

We have gotten this question in the past. The front matter of our PDF books is not a EULA [end user license agreement]. We make some requests, but we are not trying to legally bind users to those requests. We’ve spent (and will continue to spend) a lot of time and money on Book Search, and we hope users will respect that effort and not use these files in ways that make it harder for us to justify that expense (for example, by setting up the ACME Public Domain PDF Download service that charges users a buck a book and includes malware in the download). Rather than using the front matter to convey legal restrictions, we are attempting to use it to convey what we hope to be the proper netiquette for the use of these files.

]]> By: Yakov Shafranovich http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2009/01/30/change-in-google-book-search-guidelines-for-public-domain-books/comment-page-1/#comment-50898 Yakov Shafranovich Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:47:28 +0000 http://www.shaftek.org/?p=591#comment-50898 It seems that there has been a court case where federal court in the US ruled that copyright cannot be asserted over digital scans of public domain works. See my follow up post <a href="http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2009/02/01/why-scans-of-public-domain-books-cannot-be-copyrighted/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. It seems that there has been a court case where federal court in the US ruled that copyright cannot be asserted over digital scans of public domain works. See my follow up post here.

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