The Looting Of Our Public Domain

Terrible News: Court Says It’s Okay To Remove Content From The Public Domain And Put It Back Under Copyright

Did you know that if someone takes a public domain book, it can be put under a new Copyright, depriving us all?

Did you further know that if Google Books has a public domain book that is re-Copyrighted by someone, Google must remove that public domain book?

This has been happening.

Which is why earlier this year I spent a lot of days downloading from Google Books. What’s in the public domain should stay in the public domain.

The creations of creators are not fodder for public domain parasites.

And I’ve got news for you parasites, of the several hundred public domain books I’ve gotten from Google Books, I will share them any damned time I want. Your Copyright doesn’t impress me — because it’s invalid to begin with, despite what any damned court says. My copies were public domain when I got them.

Apple Versus Google: Total Frikkin War

I didn’t watch the livestream of the Google IO event. I didn’t find out until late yesterday that it was live via YouTube. Besides which, I wouldn’t have wanted to devote hours and hours to watching that.

Anyway, it seems the war is now openly declared, if Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs) is to be believed:

The most telling thing to me was Google’s tone toward Apple at the event. Instead of pretending to still be an Apple ally, Google today basically threw down the gantlet and admitted that it’s engaged in total war with Apple.

And unlike other Apple rivals, like Adobe, Google execs weren’t huffing and puffing and wringing their hands about Apple’s bad behavior. No, instead, Google was mocking Apple. Making fun of it. Laughing at it.

That excerpt from a column where he states he’s dropping his iPhone and switching to Android!

How The iPad Helps Google Steal Books

I could have chosen other titles, but I think that’s apt.

If you want to see my stance on Google and books (if it isn’t obvious from this post title), start with this post at The eBook Test and read all of its backlinks.

Earlier this year, I was using Google Books extensively. It was a real pain. Reading a vertical screen while seated at a desk is work, not any sort of pleasure.

At one point, I got really desperate and was thinking of buying a small machine that would let me lounge and read. But there weren’t any tablets out there that would do this. And given the crap CPU in the original iteration of Archos 9, that was ruled out too.

Luckily, that desperate stretch ended without me wasting money.

Because, as it turns out, right now the iPad is nearly what I wanted all along.