Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj
Agreed. But the fact that the books is really in public domain is irrelevant, what matters is that it's not available as public domain book because of copyfraud.
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Incorrect.
Google unquestionably has the right to scan PD books and charge you to access them.
They do not have the right to say that "because we scanned these books, we now have the copyright." Nor are they making any such claim. They aren't sending PG a takedown order simply because Google scanned
The Cantebury Tales and PG also has a copy on their site -- nor would any such attempts survive even the most cursory court challenge.
In fact, Google has been rampantly infringing existing copyrights -- and getting called on it. In its scanning project, Google has scanned numerous books that have both PD and copyrighted material (e.g. an introductory essay). In distributing the scans, Google is in fact infringing on those copyrights as they have not received permission to scan and distribute it. There is a massive dispute over this, involving the Author's Guild, Federal prosecutors, and numerous authors.
All this "copyfraud" talk is essentially bogus, and demonstrates an ignorance of relevant recent events, especially regarding the Google Books settlement and resulting dispute.