Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Search the full text of books (and discover new ones).
"What's in a name? Quite a bit, actually; what you call yourself says a lot about what you think you are. And we've been thinking lately that Google Print should really be called Google Book Search.
Why the change? Well, one factor was all the comments we got about how excited people were that Google Print would help them print out their documents, or web pages they visit -- which of course it won't.
More important, the change reflects our product's evolution. When we launched Google Print, our goal was to make it easier for users to discover books. Now that we're starting to achieve that, we think a more descriptive name will help clarify what our users can do with it: namely, search the full text of books to find ones that interest them and learn where to buy or borrow them.
No, we don't think that this new name will change what some folks think about this program. But we do believe it will help a lot of people understand better what we're doing. We want to make all the world's books discoverable and searchable online, and we hope this new name will help keep everyone focused on that important goal."
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In a true hacker spirit, last night I decided to have some fun with Google Books. I found a book there that I already own, printed last year (so it's copyrighted), so I could compare what they offer to what they restricted. Google points out which pages are "restricted," and in my opinion, they restrict far too little of the well-researched, a-lot-of-time-and-money-spent, blood-sweat-and-tears-poured-into-it, poor-author-trying-to-make-a-buck, copyrighted material.
I will most definitely not give details on how I did it - beyond saying that WebmasterWorld supplied the basic knowledge - but after an hour-and-a-half, most of which was spent on software development, I now own about 90-95% of the original book in a PDF e-book, ready for printing.
> We want to make all the world's books discoverable and searchable [...]
...and "ownable." It would seem to me that publisher & author fears about Google Book Search are quite well-founded...
Wow. crooks.google.com "Empowering Pirates since 2005"
I can't believe they are still going forward with this.
They are in flagrant violation of copyright laws. By simply searching for a book title, and clicking "more results for this title" you can get your hands on MULTIPLE DIFFERENT 3+ page samples... like mentioned above approx 95% of the content.
Just the ticket for a company with already slipping PR - up yours Google, on behalf of myself, and every author whom you are bending over.
They will be crushed in the class action suit pending.
So hoping this is the way it turns out.
What's up with Google launching products almost everyday?
This week they launched Google Analytics, Google Base, and now Google Books.
My Oh My! What's next?
What people are saying...
"Not only will scholarship in these fields be enhanced as a result of digitization, but it will become more relevant as well ...The more that is scanned and made searchable, the more humanity as a whole will benefit..." Tom - a student?
No way.... he swallowed a dictionary... previously made available on books.g****le.com then?
Screwing author's is not what Google should be doing right now!
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).
Apologies for not being more clear.
So do you document the holes in G book search - and send it to Google - so they can fix it?
Or do you email your findings to the class action guys?
That's what I would do, but anonymously, I'd just send them the method used. The lawyers could then download a copyrighted book, and present that as evidence that this was not even remotely fair use, not that fair use even applies in this case.
Be careful associating yourself in anyway that can be traced to this type of activity, a security researcher got jailed for demonstrating publically a simple method to access bank records, involving nothing more complicated than adding some ../ to the url of the bank site.
Amen!
They have shown absolutely no legal basis for what they are doing, only claiming that they know what is best for authors and publishers, and that they are doing it for their benefit.
This is the text book definition of copyright infringement, and I hope Google settles out of court before the authors and publishers own them outright. Everything is at stake in this case.
You've clearly never entered into the real world of publishing or you'd never say these things: 'great profit for writers'...
There are few arts less profitable to enter into than writing.
Typical WebmasterWorld post. What gives artists control over their destinies is control over their copyrights. Oh, wait, I missed this, I see, when I publish a book, and it's copyrighted, and google puts up illegal digital representations of it on google books, I can sue them, and finally make some profit off my writing. I see, your point was subtle, easy to miss.
