Public Domain Books: Open Book Alliance Works to Pry Open Google’s Closed Books

From an Open Book Alliance Blog Post:

Everyone knows Google has scanned tens of millions of books, including over 3 million books in the public domain, and that it got most of these books from many different libraries, public and private.
What most don’t know is that Google forces those libraries to use technology to restrict Internet access to those digital copies, even the public domain books that are no longer copyrighted.
Under Google’s contracts, those libraries must deploy “technological measures” to prevent other libraries, digital archives, researchers, competing search engines, and others from downloading and analyzing the content of those public domain books.  That’s wrong.  Public domain books should always be accessible by the public, and not locked up by Google’s technology.

Read the Complete Blog Post and Learn What the OBA is Trying to Do About It
In Other Google Books News: “Google plans to seek Books lawsuit dismissal” (via IDG News Service)

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Digital Collections, Libraries, News, Publishing, Resources