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

Tue Jun 21 13:20:24 UTC 2011

On 06/20/2011 03:17 PM, dingodog at fastmail.fm wrote:
> 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)

While I think it's fine to question the policies of Hathi Trust (or any
other digital library project), I have to say that the bit above sounds a
lot like "How dare they offer us free ice cream when those that give financial
support get banana splits!"

Last I checked, Hathi does not assert ownership rights over either
its content or its metadata.  You can do whatever you want with what you
download or view at their site, with the only restrictions
being those imposed by the third parties that own copyrights to some
of the books Hathi offers free access to.  Hathi makes it clear what rights and
restrictions apply to different kinds of books, and their statements at

http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use

do not add any additional legal constraints. They are willing to open up access
to limited-search books if they can be shown to be out of copyright (and
indeed, have researched copyrights and opened up thousands of volumes scanned
by Google that Google itself has not.)  And they'll tell you where to
find the original book they scanned, if you want to scan it again
and offer a nicer version.  (Or, if the book is scanned by Google,
they'll tell you that, and you can see if Google offers a free PDF
on their own site.)

Hathi Trust is an organization dedicated to preserving and providing
access to the cultural record.  This costs money to do (costs that are
paid, in part, by the library I work for).  To ensure financial support
over the long term, they have decided to go with a "freemium" business model,
where everyone gets a basic level of access for free (which includes
readable access to all the pages of their public domain books online),
and supporters get enhanced access.

If you think that they should provide more free
access, you're welcome to advocate that they do that.  It'll help if you
can make a convincing case that doing so will help and not hurt their
ability to sustain their preservation operations.  Or, if you think you
can do better than Hathi, you're welcome to offer better access to public
domain content you acquire from them or others.  But I don't see how
it helps the cause of public access when folks who go a certain distance in
freely offering content get blamed and labeled "evil" when they don't go
as far as some would prefer.

John Mark Ockerbloom
(Note: I do not speak for Hathi Trust. While my library is a member,
  the opinions above are solely my own.)