Setting free Public Domain Books from Google Books

http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/2007/01/10/has-authoramacom-set-free-100-public-domain-books-from-google-book-search

DigitalKoans has commented the action by Philipp Lenssen who “has announced that he has put up 100 public domain books from Google Book Search on Authorama”.

I am in doubt if there is any legal relevance according US law of Google’s “Terms of use”. The problem of valid contracts has been shortly discussed by Peter Hirtle in 2004:

“This is a very complex question, with few definite answers. My best guess is that in states that have passed UCITA laws (such as Maryland and Virginia), there is a good chance that a click-through license is binding. Whether a “terms of agreement” license is also binding is less clear – and it becomes even murkier when one moves outside of those states (or overseas).”

http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2004/07/the_public_doma.html

See also

http://wiki.netbib.de/coma/GooglePrint

http://steinbeck.ucs.indiana.edu/novels/author.html

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