Goggle Books

themole

I was giving a quick look at books.google.com today.

It lets you search books for text.

I was wondering if anyone has come across a way to download a whole book?

Capt'n Midnight

themole wrote:

I was wondering if anyone has come across a way to download a whole book?

That would be illegal if the book was still in copyright and tending towards a banning

but for free books - http://www.gutenberg.org

themole

Any way of selecting books which are not covered by copyright?

Also how much can you download within copyright restrictions?

aidan_walsh

Google themselves state that the aim of Google Books is to allow people to perus a book and decide if it interests them. They don't seem to have any intention on letting people download whole books.

Capt'n Midnight

themole wrote:

Any way of selecting books which are not covered by copyright?

Also how much can you download within copyright restrictions?

iirc it's up to 10% for your own research purposes - if you are a student ask the librarians they should know

some allow short passages to be quoted in a review of the book

otherwise it's life +70 (this gets extended every time mickey mouse is on the verge of going public domain - the 'reason' is to provide for the longer life expectancy of children of the copyright holder - though in practise valuable copyrights tend to be held by large multinationals who make most of the money on the product in the first decade or so - reissues of Star Wars and other "classics" being an exception )

exceptions - our national anthem is copyright forever by govt and in the UK peter pan copyright is owened by great ormond street childrens hospital again forever

themole

aidan_walsh wrote:

Google themselves state that the aim of Google Books is to allow people to perus a book and decide if it interests them. They don't seem to have any intention on letting people download whole books.

that may be their intention.

But I don't think it will be too long until someone comes up with a way of downloading a whole book. This will remove the most difficult part of creating a electronic copy of a book and distributing it. (This being illegal of course).

Thats why publishers are worried about it.

It remains to be seen if the increased access to sections of books before actual purchase will increase sales enough to off set the inevitable pirating of books.

Its all good for the consumer though.

legologic

http://books.google.com/books?q=copyright+law&btnG=Search+Books&as_brr=0

Here's one or two you may want to peruse dude.