riddle me this

[chronovore]

So Google's Book Search (beta) is open for business. What I don't get is how to search easily for books that are out of copyright, and therefore up for free and legal mashuppery. When I look for Tarzan of the Apes, it returns several volumes that have been recently printed, are therefore in copyright, and therfore do not have the full text available for reading through their service. I had heard, perhaps mistakenly, that Google offered PDFs of the full text of books outside of copyright, but I can't find anything resembling that there, though the full text is available through Project Gutenberg, as the work has been in the public domain in the USA since 1993.

It is confusing to see  works that have entered the public domain listed as protected in Google's book search. Am I using it the wrong way or missing something obvious?

By the way, fuck Sonny Bono right in is dead, I Can't Ski To Save My Life, Not Comprehending the Basis for Copyright ass, and his widow and her cheap, argumentum ad misericordiam (Sonny would have wanted) "forever less one day" in her heinie as well.

Comments

[lunablack.livejournal.com]

Put down the can opener...oh noes...Aigh! It's a can of worms!

You so don't want to know on the copyright stupidity. It gives me the twitches, it does.

Seems to me that it goes like this, right. So you've got a book and the author dies and the book that was published *during his lifetime* goes out of copyright and into public domain. All good, yeah?

From what I can tell, if someone says "hey, great book, let's reprint that", then *they* own the copyright on the version that they printed. So if you quote from it, you gotta prove that you quoted from the original version and not the reprint.

::twitches::

omgwtf!

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that's the case in the USA, though I have no idea how it works outside of that. I know that Peter Pan was granted some form of exception to UK copyright law, because it is the primary source of income for the children's hospital to which Barrie. tsanders lists an appropriate wikipedia entry below; I'll read it later today after having achieved sufficient levels of coffee-imbued clarity.

Mainly I'm still curious why Google would have multiple printings of a book listed and not make the one that is "most usable" the most prominent hit-return on the book.

But, yes, in general I also see intellectual property law as needing some form of OMGWTFBBQ logic-scented airstrike.

[lunablack.livejournal.com]

Well, all I know is what I've heard of in the USA. Caitlin Kiernan recently blogged on her having to prove that she quoted from the out-of-copyright version of a book, as opposed to one of the numerous still copyrighted ones. Never been to UK, so don't know the rules there.

A misapprehension

[tsanders.livejournal.com]

This is all I-Am-Not-A-Lawyer and As-Far-As-I-Know of course.

I don't believe that copyright is affected by the in-printedness of the work. There are books that are in the public domain (say the works of Shakespeare) despite the fact that they are in print.

In the US copyright extends 70 years past the death of the creator for modern creations. Older things enter a cesspool of exemptions and subclauses - see Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law) for more.


Now I suppose somebody (call her Alice) might *EDIT* something that is out of copyright, claim their edit is a "derivative work" and claim copyright on that specific edit. If another individual (call him Bob) then derives something else from the original out-of-copyright version I'm not sure where the burden of proof would fall. I know Alice would have to actively pursue redress, but whether the resultant court case would ask Alice to prove Bob derived from her edit, or ask Bob to prove he derived from the original - that's unclear to me.

BTW, the thought that you are pondering Tarzan fanfic/mashuppery fills me with dread. My only recourse is to remind myself that you don't have that kind of free time. I will say no more on the subject. :-)

Re: A misapprehension

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your considered and considerate response; to put your clearly troubled heart at ease, I am not considering Tarzan fanfics. I'm mainly curious about using Google's book search as a tool for finding out-of-copyright texts and characters. Part of my head has been playing with the idea of dragging mostly-forgotten characters out, as a sort of "League of Substitute Heroes" variant on "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" -- which might be worse than Tarzan fanfics.

I'll scope the wiki entry after I've had enough coffee Power-Ups, thanks!