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Google to Sell Old News Articles
Krishna Dagli was one of a few people to note that Google is planning on selling old news. Or more accurately, scanning in 200 years of old newspapers, and selling people the ability to view the full text. They'll be using publications like the NYT and Time magazine. Summaries will be free, but the full article text will have a price.
I don't see how google can make money doing this when competitors like Projecdt Gutenberg (groups releasing free text of material in the public domain) do the same for free. I think google would better position itself by giving free access to limit incentive for free competitors to do the same, and then make their money by selling advertising.
But, as what happens to other sites that have a "paid version" of an article, will Google still cache the full version?
I do google searches all the time that result in my ending up on a site that wants to charge me to read the article. I hit the back button and click on Google's cached copy and read the whole thing just fine without paying a dime.
That would make my day just a little brighter if Google ends up caching their own paid content.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
example, i buy a beethoven cd, can i then copy and pass it around? not according to them.. ...as there is copyright in sound _recordings_ seperate from the copyright in the music as composed by the composer - although, amazingly, only since 1972 in the United States.
A better example would be sheet music, where there is indeed a concerted effort by publishers to keep works by long-dead composers in copyright by creating new editions and in some cases refusing to sell but only renting the music.
I searched and searched for the TFA in Google News Archive, but the only copy I found says it was published today. Maybe being published today isn't old news enough to get into the archive. Maybe you mean its a dupe, so I checked that too. Sure enough, it's from 1879:
s &hl=en&sa=N&sugg=d&as_hdate=1879
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=google+new
Turned up this summary:
"The streets were thronged to an unusual extent, and every point where news was obtainable was besieged. Contrary to general expectation there were no bulletins displayed at the telegraph offices, and the disappointed crowds which had gathered at those points soon dispersed."
I8-D
As I understand it, when a full text content provider republishes copyright-free works, they copyright their newly bundled publication.
The new publisher has copyright on their republishing of the original copyrighted material, but the copyright is "thin." It only applies to the specific manner in which the new publication presents the original material (colors, layout, etc.) The underlying content is still in the public domain. Think of all of the versions of Shakespeare's King Lear. They all contain the same content. It's just presented differently by each individual publisher.
Dowloading ProQuest's PDFs and hosting them on your own would be a violation of their copyright not because you are re-using the underlying content, but because you are appropriating ProQuest's particular presentation of the content.
US government documents that are prepared by the government (as opposed to by a third party) are (with a few exceptions), all automatically in the public domain, on the theory that they belong to the people.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ