HRoth - 9:27 am on May 26, 2005 (gmt 0)

Works in the public domain can indeed be copyrighted. Dover is an example. I have a copy of John Gerard's The Herbal, first published in 1629, copyright 1975 by Dover Publications. Dover did not provide any footnotes, any interpretive essays, any illustrations, an index, a new font, modernization of spelling, or anything else. As far as I can see, they copied this book in its entirety from the original publication without changing one jot or tittle. So it is indeed possible to copyright a work in the public domain. At least a Penguin edition gives you explanatory footnotes for your money.

According to the AAUP letter, Google is proposing that it copy in its entirety all of the books - these include primarily books still under copyright - in the libraries of Harvard, University of Michigan, and Stanford, so this is NOT about works in the public domain in any case. The AAUP is objecting to the fact that Google, in order to provide the snippets in results of searches of copyrighted books, says it has to copy the entire book and that it has a right to do so under Fair Use - according to Google, it doesn't even have to ask permission to copy the entire book. But the AAUP is objecting that this is not Fair Use, and from my perspective, they are right. A parallel example: you want to use bits of a book in an academic paper as examples for a discussion, which is allowed under Fair Use, so you decide it's okay to photocopy the entire work for yourself so you can look for those bits. That's not allowed under Fair Use. It's copyright infringement.

Google is further claiming it got permission for this copying of the libraries project from the publishers when in fact it got permission from the publishers to use excerpts of specific works, not to copy all their published works in their entirety. The publishers are saying that Google is not giving them any real opportunity to opt out, despite its claims.

Google also is giving the libraries digital copies of the books, which is plainly copyright infringement, because they don't have permission to give anyone a copy of a copyrighted work, not even a library that owns a hard copy of the book.

I have a book published with a university press (and I even have one of those PhDs that a poster believes causes a person to be unable to think). It makes me angry that Google is going to get to copy my book and do whatever it wants with it, including use it to sell things like ads or a search service, without my permission.