For another example, while I absolutely love projects that have digitized masses of material, like Google Books, Making of America, or Accessible Archives, copyright and access issues are still important for those who want to undertake small, focused digitization projects. Having access to an original item that is in the public domain makes those kinds of projects possible. (At least they will be as long as the Google legislation doesn't go through as it now stands.)
Actually, Google is not pursuing legislation but a lawsuit. Furthermore, Google has made no attempt whatever to restrict access to, or scanning of, works in the public domain. It's true they spent a lot of money scanning public domain works. And they plan to sell them--not, in most cases, give them away, the free stuff is just a PR teaser--but that is not inherently illegal.
What Google _has_ done is scan over 2 million works that are still under copyright and is planning to sell _those_, not via any legislation to directly change copyright law but via a class action suit and a contract made with a handful of parties who do not represent most authors or publishers. This includes not only the much-ballyhood and badly-named "orphan works"--mid-20th-century works still under copyright which Google wants to sell without bothering to locate the owners--but hundreds of thousands of works by live, fully locatable authors (including some I know personally) and in-business, fully locatable publishers, and including works still in print.
Much of the outcry about Google's scanning of "orphan works" comes from others who would also like to violate the copyrights of "orphan works" but are afraid they can't financially withstand the resulting lawsuits whereas Google can. I have no sympathy.
Forget about some bugbear of Google "preventing" access to public domain works, or other people scanning them. They can't, and no legal objection was ever raised to their scanning public domain works. The legal objection is to their scanning works still under copyright. As Google's scanning of copyrighted works is currently being investigated by the Justice Department, hopefully they will not get away with it.
Fran Lavolta Press New book on 1820s clothing! http://www.lavoltapress.com _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
