balam - 10:35 pm on Nov 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

> Wow. crooks.google.com "Empowering Pirates since 2005"

Not taken personally, and I hope it wasn't meant that way.

I wasn't looking to steal anything; I picked a book that I already own (emphasis added in case anyone missed that point ealier). I was just curious as to how well Google is actually protecting - as opposed to feel-good lip service - the intellectual property of others, and it turns out that with a little knowledge & determination applied by the visitor, they aren't. (Disabling right clicks slowed me for all of a second or two... Their only other "line of defence" stopped me for about 1 minute, as I figured out what they were up to.)

Curiousity let me discover that pages missing from the BERPS turned out to be blank pages between chapters. Despite what it may say in the Google Book Search Help FAQ [books.google.com], I didn't have to login to get the pages from the book, nor was I in any way restricted in the number of pages I could view.

It's security through obscurity, and we know what kind of security that is. They seem to rely on user ignorance and the user's machine being configured a certain way. And while most users are ignorant and their machines are "properly" configured, that's still no way to provide security for intellectual property (which, in this case, is worth $34.95US in paperback form).

Bottom line? As we all know, if you put (valuable) copyrighted material online, despite your best efforts & security measures, it can & will be stolen.

I personally wonder which would have more effect: a (the) class-action lawsuit, or authors receiving e-book copies of their works (when no e-book version should even exist).