Geoff N. speaks out! (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

The original article and follow-ups led me to find the email address of
the head of the Google Books project (Jon Orwant).  I asked him why
books that should clearly be in the public domain (pre-1923 and govt
works) are not fully viewable -- this was his response:


******quote starts************

Regarding pre-1923 works & government documents: we do need to be
extraordinarily conservative since people seem to enjoy suing us with
wild abandon.  Often pre-1923 works are kept in snippet view because
they lack copyright notices, and the 9th Circuit "Twin Books" decision
makes it difficult to conclude that books after 1909 that lack copyright
notices are in the public domain.

Government works are not all in the public domain, alas.  If the sole
author is the US government they are, but not every US government
document has the US government as the sole author.  One example: an IRS
circular for which the IRS licensed a syndicated comic strip.  They
probably licensed the rights solely for the single print run, which
means that the circular contains copyrighted material and we therefore
can't put it into full view.   Congressional hearings in particular
occasionally contain copyrighted material.  Also, there are some
government documents for which the writing was contracted out, and the
copyright status of those is uncertain.

We have started to fullview some government documents (army training
manuals among them!) but it requires a fairly rigorous approval
mechanism inside Google.  More to come.


******quote ends**************

Note his use of "fullview" as a verb in his last graf.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Wilson Gray
> Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 11:01 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Geoff N. speaks out!
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
---------------
> --------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Geoff N. speaks out!
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> news.slashdot.org/story/09/09/07/2046243/google-books-as-train-wreck-
> for-scholars
> ---
> -Wilson
> ---
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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