A few days ago, Bar­bara and I dis­cov­ered the Google Book Search Part­ner Pro­gram, and read­ing things over we won­dered how some of the books we’ve scanned which are in the Pub­lic Domain might be sub­mit­ted and shared.

So I wrote to them:

We dig­i­tize and redis­trib­ute pub­lic domain books only, and are won­der­ing whether it’s pos­si­ble to sub­mit them to Google Book Search via the Part­ner Pro­gram. The demo/​intro screen­cast sug­gested that all books need an ISBN or state­ment of rights.

How would you deal with works that are (prov­ably) in the Pub­lic Domain? Is there a way to sub­mit them, with­out first attach­ing a use­less ISBN to the scans?

And Greg from Google just replied:

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your inter­est in the Google Books Part­ner Pro­gram. While an ISBN is not required for par­tic­i­pa­tion in Google Book Search, please note that par­tic­i­pants may only sub­mit copy­righted titles to Google Book Search for which they hold rights. We are unable to accept pub­lic domain books through our Part­ner Program.

If you have any fur­ther ques­tions at this time, please don’t hes­i­tate to let me know.

Sin­cerely,

Greg
The Google Book Search Team

So by this argu­ment, should we do what Plain Label Books appear to have done, which is slap a faux copy­right notice onto defin­i­tively Pub­lic Domain (and crappy) texts from Project Guten­berg? Or should we per­haps do what Kessinger Pub­lish­ing does, which is scan and repub­lish phys­i­cal books in the Pub­lic Domain, and claim a spu­ri­ous copy­right on that?

Which kind of ero­sion of the pub­lic domain would you like me to try first, Google? Shall I show “snip­pets” of Pub­lic Domain Books, like Kessinger, and make peo­ple pay ridicu­lously inflated prices for crap POD copies of things that would be bet­ter down­loaded for free [from you, I’d argue]? Or should I go through the motions of Greg’s inter­pre­ta­tion of your Terms of Ser­vice and lie about my rights so that I can slot some­thing into your ill-​​fitting busi­ness logic?

Or maybe, per­haps, because these books are in the Pub­lic Domain, you might get a clue about what that actu­ally means, and acknowl­edge that I, and you, and every­body has the rights to those works.

That’s what “Pub­lic Domain” means. We have the right.

Put your man­ager on the line, Greg.