Controversy has never strayed too far away from Google. When Gmail came in offering 2GB of space people were thrilled; that is, until they realised: Google scans the text of Gmail messages in order to filter spam and detect viruses, just as all major webmail services do. Google also uses this scanning technology to deliver targeted text ads and other related information. This is completely automated and involves no humans.
When Google Earth - a 3D interface with the planet - was launched, there was an outcry; Google was playing Big Brother, felt many, and they didn't like that. Google knows your search habits, Google knows where you live, Google scans your e-mail, and basically knows just about everything there is to know about you. What if that information was put to misuse? Or sold to advertisers at a premium with Google being the only one to gain? Google's motto 'Don't be Evil' didn't exactly pacify the antagonised. Google is probably one of the only search engines with hate-groups prolifically working towards its downfall, the seemingly most active one being www.google-watch.org.
Google's latest innovation - Google Print - has managed to get more than just a few panties in a twist. Daunting as it seems, Google Print intends on scanning excerpts from every single book on the planet and making it available online. So if you're looking for a line from a poem, or want to know which title a certain phrase is from, Google Print is quite a blessing. Or, you can read a few pages of a book and decide whether or not you'd like to buy it; books that belong in the public domain are available in their entirety for people to read offline. The Author's Guild sued Google last week alleging that its scanning and digitising of copyright protected books infringes copyright, even if only small excerpts are displayed in search results as Google has been doing. Google's argues that the project adheres to the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law, which allows excerpts in book reviews and the like.
We went into Google Print and were pleasantly surprised to find excerpts from all the titles we punched in, some of them were either rare or had been out of print for what seems like aeons. However, we wanted to see how a whole book would read on the site, so we decided to punch in something that was from the public domain realm. The only problem is that Google Print does not have a separate section listing titles of books belonging to the public domain, and we didn't know any titles off hand. So we minimised Google Print and opened up Google Search and fed in 'books public domain' in hope of getting some titles. What showed up was the last thing we were expecting; and it was mind-boggling.
Forget public domain titles, the search threw up nothing but websites featuring whole e-books that were not under copyright laws of any kind.
There were also some cheeky websites, like http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/nonus.html, which starts off by saying:
Warning! Restricted Access!
The following books are by authors that have died more than 50 years ago, which places them in the public domain in many countries, particularly those outside the US and Europe. However, they remain copyrighted under United States law, where works copyrighted in 1923 or later can remain under copyright for up to 95 years after publication. Do NOT download or read these books online if you or your system is in the United States.
Bury the hatchet on Google Print. Who wants to read excerpts when you're getting the whole deal for free? The Gutenberg Project's http://www.gutenberg.org/ has by far the largest collection of 16,000 titles; in over 50 languages including Mayan, Friulano, Afrikaans, and Icelandic, to name a few. It's only drawback though, is that it's not very user friendly. We know of a quite a few people who've visited the site, gotten very excited and spent about an hour looking in awe at the choice of titles and authors only to then make a quick exit because they couldn't figure out how to download or save the book they wanted to read.
www.authorama.com is an absolutely delightful site with some long out of print classics like Hans Christian Andersen's 'The True Story Of My Life' and Dostoyevsky's 'Notes from the Underground'; apart from the classics it's even got philosophy, religion, and fiction. A lot of the e-books - like 'Alice in Wonderland' - even have pictures in them. It's definitely worth a visit for anyone who enjoys reading. The best part is you don't have to feel guilty for not feeling guilty because they're all in the public domain. www.booksforabuck.com, apart from having a bunch of e-books also has a page dedicated to other free book sites and public domain book sources.
To read the entire story, buy a copy of Impact Advertising and Marketing magazine dated November 7-13
