Google: Download a Million Books for Free

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ssalim

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If they are still under copyright protection, why did the major university library agreed with Google on scanning their collections?

Oh sure, don't help kids gain knowledge and education by reading library's public books online and at the same time saving gas going to the library and/or time going there.

Stupid lawyers.
 
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Nevermind that they're out of print, although I suppose that all of these authors think that THEIR intellectual property is "special", and that they should be "compensated", despite the book being out of print and having an expired copyright(that's like 20 or 50 years?). 99.999% of all books out there are complete garbage anyways...
 

doomtomb

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Informational books should just be public domain anyway. Authors and book publishers are still doing things the old-fashioned way. All this information is accessible via the internet anyways. Like my college forcing me to buy new editions of textbooks all the time just so the bookstore and the publisher can make more money. $150-200 for some books in just absurd. Save a tree, download the .pdf.
 

kittle

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Depends on what books are in this collection.
If i can get stuff from my favorite authors (who are now mostly dead), then Id be interested.
 

chaohsiangchen

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[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]Like my college forcing me to buy new editions of textbooks all the time just so the bookstore and the publisher can make more money. $150-200 for some books in just absurd. Save a tree, download the .pdf.[/citation]

Very true. The other way is just as annoying as colleges all try to take advantage of textbooks. One professor which I took class from, always use out-of-date and out-of-print books. Since students can't get the book anywhere, they have to resolve the problem themselves. It would be much simpler to have those book of public domain available for download.
 

DXRick

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[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]Informational books should just be public domain anyway. Authors and book publishers are still doing things the old-fashioned way. All this information is accessible via the internet anyways. Like my college forcing me to buy new editions of textbooks all the time just so the bookstore and the publisher can make more money. $150-200 for some books in just absurd. Save a tree, download the .pdf.[/citation]

Don't be a hypocrite! You aren't going to college so you can give your work away for free.
 

Greg_77

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[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]Informational books should just be public domain anyway. Authors and book publishers are still doing things the old-fashioned way. All this information is accessible via the internet anyways. Like my college forcing me to buy new editions of textbooks all the time just so the bookstore and the publisher can make more money. $150-200 for some books in just absurd. Save a tree, download the .pdf.[/citation]

Sure, you could get most information on the internet, but how do you know it is accurate. When writing essays, you need to be able to site a reliable source. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't count. It takes a long time to write a text book, whose information also has to be sourced. Also, most text books aren't published, creating additional cost for the author. How would you like to write a text book for free? You may not agree with the price or the medium or the book (paper or digital), but that is a different story.
 
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If I could only download them!
Where's the site?
On books.google I don't find books in public domain!
 

FloKid

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Yey that's awsome. I love reading computer books. I hope they scanned some of those. It's cool though that they payed the authors. Google has nuff money anyways :)
 
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That would be great if you could download them all in an indexed database. Id snag a copy.
 

azxcvbnm321

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Yes everything should be free including your labor. People should just work for free, I mean they don't have anything else to do anyway other than sit around. Might as well be scrubbing my toilet while chatting with their friends on Bluetooth right?

And because one person decides to give something away, that means everything should be free too. I had a friend who didn't want this almost new couch anymore a couple of years ago and I took it. Now that this couch is broken down, I was thinking of going to the furniture store and telling them that they should give me those couches they have for free. I mean I could find a couch on the street somewhere, they're all free anyway so why is this greedy store trying to sell me something that I got one time for free?

Dude, I also remember that McDonalds had this free promotion a while ago for a small cup of their new iced coffee. Well it's pretty hot today so I went in there and asked for more free coffee, but they looked at me and said there wasn't anymore free coffee! Can you imagine that? It should be free, water costs almost nothing and neither do beans. Hell, I can get free coffee from my moms at anytime, coffee should be free.

Which reminds me that I'm moving soon and the last time I moved, my friends all helped me for free. I've never had to pay anyone to help me move before, it was all free. I think movers should work for free, it's not like people have anything better to do. I can always find friends to help me move for free so I think I should be able to ask anyone off the street to help me for free too. I mean why are people wanting to be paid when I got this for free in the past?

Humm, somehow I'm in college, but I don't understand why everything isn't for free. Maybe once I graduate from college, I'll understand why people want to be paid for work, even though in the past I've been able to gain from their work for nothing. You know, I have this friend who says that maybe those people who gave away their work were just being very very generous people and that I should be grateful, but I'm the one in college and I say that I'm entitled to whatever it is I want. I want it so I should have it for free. It's the people who want to be paid for work that are greedy, it's not that the people who give away stuff for free are generous.

I'm in college and I'm outraged that I have to pay for anything. These professors, all they do is talk during class but they expect me to pay for hearing them talk! Well I've heard people talk before for free, and I always talk during class for free too, for some reason others don't like that and don't appreciate my free talking, but I do it anyway. Yet this professor is so greedy that he wants me to pay to hear him talk. Talk should be free. I'm in college and I'm educated so I'm more right--I'm not more stupider than you. The people who make fun of the educational system and the falling standards don't know what they are talking about. I'm in college and I'm smart, I'm not stupider than nobody. I'm more better than you. Everything should be free.
 

fwupow

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What's wrong with just scanning them? As long as they don't publish the copyrighted works, I don't see a problem.

Perhaps, the lawyers can sue them for looking at 'em sideways as well!
 

tanderskey

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[citation][nom]fwupow[/nom]What's wrong with just scanning them? As long as they don't publish the copyrighted works, I don't see a problem.Perhaps, the lawyers can sue them for looking at 'em sideways as well![/citation]

on the one hand "just scanning them" begs the question "for what?" also, copyright notices on published material often have something about not reproducing, storing or transmitting too. i'd guess scanning counts as storing and that's partly why the Googlers paid the fine.
 
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