[pd-discuss] BL and google digitise books

Tue Jun 21 16:36:23 UTC 2011

On 21 June 2011 09:47, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:

> E.g. I understand the material from BL is unfortunately still rights
> encumbered [1], possibly due to contractual obligations (with
> Google?).

I wonder if they actually will be. We don't have a copy of the
license; we jsut have one word in the press release to work on. To me,
this feels an awful lot like it might resemble the standard Google
Books rights blurb, which "encourages" and "requests" non-commercial
use, but doesn't actually ever attempt to prohibit it -

http://www.publicdomaintreasurehunter.com/2010/10/02/is-it-ok-to-use-googles-public-domain-books-for-commercial-purposes/

"...we are not trying to legally bind users to those requests ...
Rather than using the front matter to convey legal restrictions, we
are attempting to use it to convey what we hope to be the proper
netiquette for the use of these files."

Assuming they keep the standard pseudo-license, then it becomes a
logistical issue of getting hold of the text rather than a legal issue
which is preventing redistribution.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk