I'm no copyright expert, but I believe the answer to your question is yes.

The author's right to control distribution of the content has lapsed, but Google still own the copyright to their representation of the content. I would imagine it's the same as modern editions of books that are out of copyright – the fact that the play / novel is in the public domain doesn't mean your allowed to photocopy the new book.

Google has a right to deny commercial usage to "their version" (ie the scanned PDF file) as they are the creators of that particular version.

That is not to say that you could not copy the entire text from their PDF and mash it up whatever way you like as the text itself is in the public domain by virtue of having passed outside the boundaries of copyright.

Eoin

This is great:

http://books.google.com/books?vid=04IZnM2YNWOd28nx&id=I46XIiwMQiwC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=intitle:penny+cyclop%C3%A6dia&num=100&as_brr=1

A 500 word encyclopaedia that stops at AND... this thing is huge and most informative

already posted here http://blogoscoped.com/forum/65484.html

This is the TOS you recieve on the first page of the downloaded book

<quote>
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in
</quote>

http://lh6.google.com/topdawgnate/RPXCXINYABI/AAAAAAAAAR4/XcP8V55noFo/digiGoogle.JPG
Link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/topdawgnate/Web/photo#4969091466469572626

> That is not to say that you could not copy the entire
> text from their PDF and mash it up whatever way you
> like as the text itself is in the public domain by virtue
> of having passed outside the boundaries of copyright.

So what do they own actually? What if I scan the exact same book and publish it as PDF?

Also, if I take their text out of the PDF, am I not removing their watermark, which is against their guidelines?

I'm curious to read Lawrence Lessig's analysis on this if he decides to write one...

Hmmm. Many of the books aren't visible at all in Germany. Like Hamlet or Flatland. Both works are in the public domain here.

http://books.google.com/books?id=HKackp-vG-YC&pgis=1
http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC14763089&id=2-iPD1DrwgYC&pg=PA3

That´s quite simple. Books are in under public domain, so their text is free to use. But Google don´t offer you simply text, they offer you photos of that text. And that photos are not under public domain, it´s Google´s property. So you can do pretty much everything what you want with the text, when you grabbed it from their PDF, because this text is under public domain. If you scanned the exact same book and publish it as PDF, then these specific photos of that book would be your property and you would be allowed to do anything with it, even leave it for free use.

Neat idea? useful idea? sure. But it's hardly new.
Michael Hart
http://samvak.tripod.com/busiweb46.html
Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart
and Project Gutenberg have been digitizing books for 35 years and making them accessible in a number of formats.

Here are a few sample searches (using titles promoted in the news stories) of Google Book Search along with a list of more sources for full text books.

+ http://books.google.com/books?spell=1&q=aesop%27s+fables&btnG=Search+Books&as_brr=1A

Google Book Search for Aesop's Fables. We've also limited the search to "full view" books. Note the first few 10 results do NOT include the original Aesop's Fables by Aesop.
http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC01087801&id=x4ABu_Ve870C&pg=PR10&lpg=PR10&dq=aesop%27s+fables&as_brr=1Results

#9 is The Fables of Aesop No link to print the book in PDF. Perhaps this is an opening day glitch?

Update: Since several versions are available we did http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC06220798&id=uQH_0HMidbwC&printsec=toc&dq=aesop%27s+fables&as_brr=1&sig=Xb3_-2k366LII_wy9ybT0gw4Bmk
find one that is printable.

The http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC06220798&id=uQH_0HMidbwC&output=pdf&sig=uhszrnXJGTRbd8TFFS3yqt_tAYk
books are searchable by keyword but cannot be browsed by chapter/section or in this case fable. :-)

Another title mentioned is Dante's "Inferno". Here's a search for that title http://books.google.com/books?q=Dante%27s+%22Inferno%22&btnG=Search+Books&as_brr=1
limited to full view books. We did not find the book in the Top 20 results. However, an advanced search and then limiting it to author does show the book and

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC08892977&id=htkrUmjuNjoC&output=pdf&sig=Zl6g6OI9nUCG17Wshb0Zxo3UrOY
it's available for printing. Will people take the time to limit by author?

Again, the PDF version does not allow browsing by chapter and for those of you who like fingers (this was a meme going around a few week's ago) look at page 5.

Let's not forget the sources like http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/Project Gutenberg have been digitizing books for 35 years.

You'll see they offer numerous versions (various translations) of Aesop's Fables available for quick download. In the case of this title, it can be downloaded in numerous formats including:
+ HTML
+ Plain text
+ MS Lit for PocketPC
+ Palm Database

Want more? Sure.

1)
http://www.worldlibrary.net/Join.htm
The World eBook Library Here, in one place, access to over 330,000 full text books and growing. All in PDF and ready for printing. The cost? Only $8.95/year. They plan to have over 500,000 titles by 2007. Institutional memberships are also available. Titles in 100+ languages and powerful http://worldlibrary.net/Help.htmadvanced search features. Guided tour http://www.worldlibrary.net/Tour.htm here.

2) WOW!!!
Children's Digital Library From the University of Maryland. Here's http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/TextSearch?term=catIds:418&lang=English&location=everywhere&view=cover&page=1&pgct=12&route=recent&sort=titlea list of some recently added books. Very impressive!!! Note not only the presentation of the books but also the many ways a child can search.

3) http://shop.ebrary.com [URL corrected – Tony]
ebrary
Many now this service as one licensed to libraries. However, they also offer over 20,000 NEW books free. All you need to do is put a minimum of $5 on account. You are only charged to print or copy a page. About 25 cents. 4) NetLibrary Text and Audio Books Lots of content including books from Project Gutenberg that can be printed and nicely organized by chapter. Many libraries of all types offer this service for free. All you need is a library card. Both OLD and just released books. Again, a library card is all you need. We sure wish OCLC would do more to help libraries promote these services.

4) NetLibrary Text and Audio Books
Lots of content including books from Project Gutenberg that can be printed and nicely organized by chapter. Many libraries of all types offer this service for free. All you need is a library card. Both OLD and just released books. Again, a library card is all you need. We sure wish OCLC would do more to help libraries promote these services.

5) http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania provides access to 10s of thousands of free books. As you'll see here, new books added daily from many sources that do digitization work.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/new.html

6) http://www.archive.org/details/texts
The Open Access Text Archive from the Internet Archive Includes over 10,000 books from the Million Books Project.
The Internet Archive is also running the http://www.opencontentalliance.org/ Open Content Alliance.

See Also: Using http://www.customizegoogle.com
CustomizeGoogle, a well-known (over 5 million downloads) and very robust program for Firefox you can restablish right-click image printing for any Google Book Search book page.

The watermark reads "Digitized by Google" not "hosted".

It reads Hosted for me.

> That´s quite simple. Books are in under public
> domain, so their text is free to use. But Google don´t
> offer you simply text, they offer you photos of that text.
> And that photos are not under public domain, it´s Google´s
> property.

Not necessarily so. I'm no copyright lawyer, but I once read that if you take a photo of the Mona Lisa you don't own the copyright to that photo, because your work doesn't add any artistic value to the original. You just copied the original, so you don't own the copyright. If the Mona Lisa is in the public domain, then others are allowed to copy your photo freely.

> The watermark reads "Digitized by
> Google" not "hosted".

Marek, here it reads "hosted". I copied the PDF to my server for reference, please see the post's link.

I downloaded http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC03797410&id=w-TUAKUHiLIC&output=pdf&sig=NRaFYz_hKwIXI779-bhv6O2uwis as a test and the watermark clearly reads 'Digitized by Google" here.

It is perfectly legal to photocopy modern editions of books that are in public domain. It would also be legal to publish your own edition of the same text. Work cannot return to copyrighted status once it has passed to public domain.

Photography of flat works has been determined, in the U.S. at least, to be a purely reproductive process that adds no artistic value and is therefore not copyrightable. (Photography of three-dimensional objects on the other hand is protected by copyright.)

G's claim to rights on public domain works is absurd, presumptuous, and preposterous.

Maybe I'm interpreting the Google TOS incorrectly, but it seems to me to be more of one that keeps Google's investment intact. What Google essential wants is people to keep the Google logo at the bottom of the screen, much like how when Google Maps or Google Earth are shown on news reports the Google logo is prominetly displayed. Maybe this will suffer some fallout (like from here), but the more people see the logo the more people know about the service.

Maybe they added the disclaimer because they re-released some OCR software today :)-

Link:
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/65549.html

Are you sure this is new?
According to the Google Feed from July 18 (Tue, 18 Jul 2006 7:57 PM), the post has been made than and was updated yesterday (Wed, Aug 30 2006).

http://cocaman.ch/images/google_book-download-july.gif

I have my own book indexed by Google Books.

It's free to download on our site, I want Google to make it downloadable in PDF too, but that seems not possible...

(Or am I wrong?)

This is the usual Google botched job that we've come to love and expect from them. Even if you can find something to download it's often almost unreadable, due to the condition of the book or the poor way that it's been scanned.

Also interesting... if you cast your mind back to the Google Shakespeare Collection, which limited access to the full text to some places and not others it's fun to compare what is available in one place on Google and what's available in other place. In the Shakespeare Collection I can download a copy of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. But I couldn't find one easily in the new Book Search option. In the new Book Search option Google is fine for me to download 14 of the comedies and tragedies, but only 3 of those from the Shakespeare collection.

Absolute chaos.

Corsin – this obviously took a few weeks to get past the lawyers!

What you have noted is the way many Google blog posts are done. Someone types them up in Blogger, and saves it as a draft – which gives it the "posted date". It then hangs around, getting the necessary approval, or simply waiting for a slow news day, then it gets "published" – at which point it actually appears on the blog, and hence in the feed.

<< I have my own book indexed by Google Books.

Link?

zmarties – You're absolutely right. The key dates are actually available in the Official Google Blog Atom feed:

<issued>2006-08-30T09:38:00-07:00</issued>
<modified>2006-08-30T16:49:48Z</modified>
<created>2006-07-18T18:57:20Z</created>

Ionut: http://books.google.com/books?as_isbn=9081033913
(Dutch though)