[pd-discuss] Hathitrust locks public domain books; amasses scans from others, and gives full access only to partners members

Mon Jun 20 19:17:23 UTC 2011

Uh-Oh... Huston... we have a problem (a big problem)

Hathitrust is a GIANT repository for scanned (mainly PUBLIC DOMAIN)
books

http://hathitrust.org/

it collects scanned books from various sources (mainly from googlebooks
project)

once has aquired the books, it verify the copyright status (or
expiration) and then, if expired, shows online

all good? not proper! in fact, hathitrust has a very strange behavior:

even anyone can browse public domain books (remember that hathitrust
scans nothing by itself, it only collects scanned books), only members
of partnered institutions can download the FULL PDF (all pages at once)

so, hathitrust, amasses tons over tons of volumes in order to lock then
access. Users not member of partnered institutions (libraries,
universities, and so on...) cannot:

- download PUBLIC DOMAIN PDF BOOKS
- see images in HI RES (they only can view images in low res)

- are forced to click page by page in order to explore the book (a kind
of torture)

but... why hathitrust has this evil behavior? Why it does not allows
full access to PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS scanned by others to be freely read?
(while hathitrust lock these books)

see here:

this book is in public domain (in USA at least)

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015037063453

but a normal user cannot download, but hathitrust offer a BEAUTIFUL BUY
OPTION (at very cheap price of 35 $ - ironic mode on)

http://um.bookprep.com/book/mdp.39015037063453

so,  we can suspect that selling books is the reason why hathitrust does
not allow download of books, but these books

- are not digitized by hathitrust
- are not in print and not commercialized because are in public domain
- are taken from others (mainly googlebooks)
- are (last but not least) PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS!

another reason can be this: every institution that wants put their
scanned books or access to FULL PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS PDFS, must pay a
certain fee. Now, if it is logical and acceptable to pay a fee for NEW
COPYRIGHTED BOOKS, is not acceptable that HATHITRUST, pratically, makes
money with PUBLIC DOMAIN BOOKS scanned by googlebooks to be freely read
(when in public domain)

Brewster Kahle also (the founder of internet Archive) criticized the
Hathitrust and here you can read another very low opinion about its
behavior regarding public domain books

http://libpunk.info/?p=68

you can also read my hard criticism towards hathitrust and see
hathitrusts employees answers

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/communityacademiclibraries/890917-419/unlocking_hathitrust_inside_the_librarians.html.csp

note: hathitrust's behavior is even more evil since many of scanned
books from googlebooks, due to null attention payed by googlebooks, even
in public domain, are not shown, because googlebooks does not care to
investigate about their legal status

hathitrust has made investigations, but, unfortunately, it seems do not
give full access to people not member of partnered instuitutions, but
make money in a very questionable way, on the skin of public domain
books

pratically, hathitrust takes public domain books and locks full acces to
these, and it seems think that if you are not a student or professor of
one of its partnered intistutions, you have no rights to have full
access to public domain books
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