A related complaint is that, even for public domain books, downloading them is painful: sometimes you need to fill a CAPTCHA, recently you often have to create

A related complaint is that, even for public domain books, downloading them is painful: sometimes you need to fill a CAPTCHA, recently you often have to create a Google Account just to download a free book <http://uzy.me/qc> http://uzy.me/qc>, and hunt for download options (the system tries to make you read the book within Google Play instead). At some point, also, the books' first page included boilerplate with requests for attribution and non-commercial use (which I think is bogus for public domain material, even if Google digitized it). If Google Books really were about improving public access to books, downloading public domain books would be frictionless, and bulk downloading and mirroring would be encouraged.