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Based on my experience with research using Google Books and Hathi Trust, this author is correct. Google has purposely broken Google Books so that it doesn't com

Based on my experience with research using Google Books and Hathi Trust, this author is correct. Google has purposely broken Google Books so that it doesn't compete with any paid sources for these materials -- even if there aren't any paid sources and the book is out of print! The TL;DR is that Google Books started out with the goal of digitizing every book ever written. Publishers sued, so they crippled their search and display functions and handed over the full texts they already had to a group called Hathi Trust. Hathi Trust is seriously crippled on purpose. It only allows access to full texts when you are sitting in a physical library of one its partner universities. That's right... I can drive to a big university, sit in their library, and download a full PDF of any book I like. But if I'm at my house, I can only read one page at a time in a browser. This is ridiculous. Hathi Trust is helping the oil business more than they're helping researchers. The marriage of Google Books content and Hathi Trust as a distribution platform is a joke. In some cases, you will even have to order an old book from interlibrary loan (see worldcat.org) if you can even get it -- when all the while Google has a scanned copy!

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
If you were an author of a book with active copyright you might want to get paid for it.
- mimixco 8y ago
  As a matter of fact, I am. I'm speaking here of old, out-of-print books, where this is very much a problem with Google Books and Hathi Trust.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    It's also a fundamental problem with our current copyright law where material remains in copyright for many decades after it has stopped being printed and sold through primary channels. Copyright should automatically expire 10 or 15 years after the last printing IMHO. If nobody cares enough to put it up for sale or even make a tiny print run just to renew the copyright, why should the government continue to enforce it? Of course this scheme falls apart a bit in the digital age, except that even ebooks get pulled from the shelves for no apparent reason. Maybe we should just go back to having to explicitly renew copyright after 15 years or so, with a fee just large enough to convince people to drop dormant works. Maybe a couple hundred bucks every 5 years. The best part would be having some easily accessed online system where you could check the copyright status of any work, including current contact information for the rightsholders if you want to arrange payment.
    - izacus 8y ago
      Expiring copyright after 15 years no matter the printing might even be a better solution. That would allow other people to build and extend works, movies and software. 15 years is plenty to make a mountain of cash.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Yup. The way I see it, a lot of IP problems are caused by people who want to take the law intended for promoting new works, and turn it into a source of passive income.
        jandrese 8y ago
        But people wouldn't be encouraged to make original works if their great grandchildren would be robbed of the opportunity to squabble over the rights to it in the courts.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  How? My grandfather wrote a book in the 1940s that’s been out of print since the mid 50s. Every entity associated with the book is dead, including the publisher, which merged into another in the late 50s and is probably an inactive imprint of some successor company. Grandpa died in 1985, and a cousin or I is likely the heir to his rights. I have a copy of the book, which I bought via Alibris from a bookstore in Wales 15 years ago. If you needed the book for research, you’d probably get it via inter-library loan from a university or a big city library. Whomever the publisher is, they don’t have it and aren’t selling it. In no scenario does anyone get paid for transacting, other than a reseller or the post office.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    That's a classic "orphan copyright" situation.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Right. And orphan works legislation has tended to be opposed by individual creators or at least the organizations that purport to represent them. The (not totally unreasonable) theory is that individuals or their estates--let's leave aside the fact that copyright terms are almost certainly too long--may well inadvertently not keep on top of what's needed to keep works non-orphaned. But "Disney" (or whoever) will most certainly be ready to pounce on anything they can acquire for free for whatever technical reason.
  - mimixco 8y ago
    Right... And since Google Books probably has a scan, who cares if you download the PDF? This problem is impeding real research without helping anyone.
  - dwyerm 8y ago
    Stay with me for a second; I'm going to go wildly afield... does intellectual property need an Adverse Possession law, too? [1] Your grandfather had a book, the rights of which should have been presumably passed down to you. My grandfather had a patented mining claim that has been passed down to me. Where the ownership of your grandfather's book is questionable, for me the physical corners of the property are questionable. A number of them are defined by things like a "4 foot spruce post" or a "12 inch diameter tree trunk" that haven't survived the ravages of time. But it is important that I patrol my property at least every couple of years because of Adverse Possession. If someone else were to use my property continuously and I don't say anything against it, one day their trespassing suddenly and magically would become ownership. For a land-owner, it is a scary idea that someone can steal my property from me, as has actually happened. [2] But I can acknowledge that it makes some sense. It comes from the idea that land is meant to be used, and if you aren't using it, maybe the person who is using it should get the rights. If nobody can stand up for an intellectual property claim, perhaps some kind of adverse possession is in order. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession [2] http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/03/nation/na-land3 http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/03/nation/na-land3
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Hathi will not provide access to even out-of-copyright works. LibGen has no such problems.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

If you were an author of a book with active copyright you might want to get paid for it.

mimixco 8y ago
As a matter of fact, I am. I'm speaking here of old, out-of-print books, where this is very much a problem with Google Books and Hathi Trust.
- jandrese 8y ago
  It's also a fundamental problem with our current copyright law where material remains in copyright for many decades after it has stopped being printed and sold through primary channels. Copyright should automatically expire 10 or 15 years after the last printing IMHO. If nobody cares enough to put it up for sale or even make a tiny print run just to renew the copyright, why should the government continue to enforce it? Of course this scheme falls apart a bit in the digital age, except that even ebooks get pulled from the shelves for no apparent reason. Maybe we should just go back to having to explicitly renew copyright after 15 years or so, with a fee just large enough to convince people to drop dormant works. Maybe a couple hundred bucks every 5 years. The best part would be having some easily accessed online system where you could check the copyright status of any work, including current contact information for the rightsholders if you want to arrange payment.
  - izacus 8y ago
    Expiring copyright after 15 years no matter the printing might even be a better solution. That would allow other people to build and extend works, movies and software. 15 years is plenty to make a mountain of cash.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Yup. The way I see it, a lot of IP problems are caused by people who want to take the law intended for promoting new works, and turn it into a source of passive income.
      - jandrese 8y ago
        But people wouldn't be encouraged to make original works if their great grandchildren would be robbed of the opportunity to squabble over the rights to it in the courts.
Spooky23 8y ago
How? My grandfather wrote a book in the 1940s that’s been out of print since the mid 50s. Every entity associated with the book is dead, including the publisher, which merged into another in the late 50s and is probably an inactive imprint of some successor company. Grandpa died in 1985, and a cousin or I is likely the heir to his rights. I have a copy of the book, which I bought via Alibris from a bookstore in Wales 15 years ago. If you needed the book for research, you’d probably get it via inter-library loan from a university or a big city library. Whomever the publisher is, they don’t have it and aren’t selling it. In no scenario does anyone get paid for transacting, other than a reseller or the post office.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  That's a classic "orphan copyright" situation.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Right. And orphan works legislation has tended to be opposed by individual creators or at least the organizations that purport to represent them. The (not totally unreasonable) theory is that individuals or their estates--let's leave aside the fact that copyright terms are almost certainly too long--may well inadvertently not keep on top of what's needed to keep works non-orphaned. But "Disney" (or whoever) will most certainly be ready to pounce on anything they can acquire for free for whatever technical reason.
- mimixco 8y ago
  Right... And since Google Books probably has a scan, who cares if you download the PDF? This problem is impeding real research without helping anyone.
- dwyerm 8y ago
  Stay with me for a second; I'm going to go wildly afield... does intellectual property need an Adverse Possession law, too? [1] Your grandfather had a book, the rights of which should have been presumably passed down to you. My grandfather had a patented mining claim that has been passed down to me. Where the ownership of your grandfather's book is questionable, for me the physical corners of the property are questionable. A number of them are defined by things like a "4 foot spruce post" or a "12 inch diameter tree trunk" that haven't survived the ravages of time. But it is important that I patrol my property at least every couple of years because of Adverse Possession. If someone else were to use my property continuously and I don't say anything against it, one day their trespassing suddenly and magically would become ownership. For a land-owner, it is a scary idea that someone can steal my property from me, as has actually happened. [2] But I can acknowledge that it makes some sense. It comes from the idea that land is meant to be used, and if you aren't using it, maybe the person who is using it should get the rights. If nobody can stand up for an intellectual property claim, perhaps some kind of adverse possession is in order. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession [2] http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/03/nation/na-land3 http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/03/nation/na-land3
dredmorbius 8y ago
Hathi will not provide access to even out-of-copyright works. LibGen has no such problems.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]