Actually, you will have many unique IDs for each book. For public domain material, there is no limit to the number of different publishers that could print a book. Even for recent publications, books can change publishers (and publishers can change names, merge, etc.), resulting in considerable variation in the ISBN.
But this is exactly the behaviour you would want. You want to keep a seperate ID for books between editions and different editors, remember that a lot of books go through changes in these processes, so the texts are probably not the same.
You would also want to keep that difference in a book database, otherwise the information would not be complete.
Re:How far back are we talking?
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An IMDb for Books
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The easies boundry would be anything with an ISBN. There you quickly have a unique ID for each book as well.
Last time I saw him was on the talk show Hardtalk on BBC World. Then he told us that he was working for a company in California with implementing a multi-user wireless vacation guide. Putting it shortly, he was working on implementing the Hitch hikers guide.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you will have many unique IDs for each book. For public domain material, there is no limit to the number of different publishers that could print a book. Even for recent publications, books can change publishers (and publishers can change names, merge, etc.), resulting in considerable variation in the ISBN.
But this is exactly the behaviour you would want. You want to keep a seperate ID for books between editions and different editors, remember that a lot of books go through changes in these processes, so the texts are probably not the same.
You would also want to keep that difference in a book database, otherwise the information would not be complete.
The easies boundry would be anything with an ISBN. There you quickly have a unique ID for each book as well.
At least it's a start.
Tanenbaums Amoeba is way ahead of the game then.
Last time I saw him was on the talk show Hardtalk on BBC World. Then he told us that he was working for a company in California with implementing a multi-user wireless vacation guide. Putting it shortly, he was working on implementing the Hitch hikers guide.
In Norway, tracing like this is illegal unless you get permission from the consumer. This is all privacy protection which is strictly enforced here.
I can understand that people react to tracing like this because it _is_ an invasion of the private sphere.