Google Print - First Impressions
I saw on Slashdot this morning that Google had opened their print website. So, I went over there and searched for my favorite author, Charles Dickens. Everything Dickens ever wrote is in the public domain, so I should have been able to find and read everything he ever wrote on Google Print. This, however, was not the case. Since all the books Google scanned by Dickens were published between 1990 and 2005, they seem to think that the material is copyrighted and can’t be viewed. I find this pretty annoying.
The irony of the situation is that the material created by the publisher: the table of contents, the index, and the introduction about the book, are all viewable from Google Print. This means that the only parts of the book I can’t see are the parts that are in the public domain, and all of the material the publisher owns a copyright for is available via Google Print.
– Stefan