Stephen Bain wrote:
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higginsparkerhiggins@gmail.com wrote:
Except google isn't asserting any kind of copyright control over these books, they're just not making it convenient to download them in your preferred format. Maybe not The Right Thing, but not as boneheaded as suing a party who reprints public domain material, as was the case in Feist v. Rural (the supreme court case you mention.)
They want people to use their service. Fair enough, given that the scanning and OCRing happened on their dime.
How does that give them any special rights? There are no database protection laws in the US, and sweat-of-the-brow has been rejected as a basis for new copyrights.
Ec