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Whenever I need something from Google Books I inevitably reach the message that this is a limited preview and the part I need is not included.

I thetefore feel the same way about Google Books that how I felt when I learned that What.cd went down: that I don't gain or lose anything anyway because I never had access to begin with, and that by not making it 100% publicly accessible you're asking for the data to one day disappear forever.

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At one point Google Books was supposed to act as a clearinghouse for scans of out-of-print books. You could have purchased a scan of any book on the site for a reasonable price, and libraries could subscribe to a service where the full text of all books was available. This settlement then got shot down because some research libraries and authors argued that this was anti-competitive, and instead wanted Congress to pass a law to free up the rights to orphaned books so anyone could start a competing service. No progress on this was subsequently made because nobody in Congress cares enough about the rights to out-of-print books to get legislation passed. The whole reason why they're out of print when ebooks and print-on-demand exist is that they won't get enough sales to make it worth the time and money to figure out who the royalties should go to. It's not a flashy issue that would make a ton of people vote for you to get re-elected, and it won't create a ton of new jobs. The result is that now nobody outside of Google gets to see the full Google Books scans.
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Yes, this was a great tragedy. I was very sad to see academics at the time arguing against Google providing what would have been one of the greatest storehouses of readily available knowledge in the world, in favor of an imaginary alternative that didn't exist and never would.
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Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi

Big companies will read up the books and make their AI recite them from memory, but Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent)

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> Archive.org was sued for renting one book on an exclusive basis (unless one would return, another wouldn't be able to rent)

No, this is what they were doing before, but they explicitly started lending out "unlimited" copies, which is why they got sued.

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That's why they got sued, but the suit is mainly over whether controlled digital lending is legal at all rather than their "emergency library". Archive.org lost the case on summary judgment, meaning that they could not come up with a single fair use argument for CDL that the judge found compelling enough to let the case go to trial. The full judgment is here https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53... but here's a couple excerpts:

> The crux of IA's first factor argument is that an organization has the right under fair use to make whatever copies of its print books are necessary to facilitate digital lending of that book, so long as only one patron at a time can borrow the book for each copy that has been bought and paid for. See Oral Arg. Tr. 31:10-15. But there is no such right, which risks eviscerating the rights of authors and publishers to profit from the creation and dissemination of derivatives of their protected works. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 106(1), (2). IA's wholesale copying and unauthorized lending of digital copies of the Publishers' print books does not transform the use of the books, and IA profits from exploiting the copyrighted material without paying the customary price. The first fair use factor strongly favors the Publishers.

> In this case, there is a "thriving ebook licensing market for libraries" in which the Publishers earn a fee whenever a library obtains one of their licensed ebooks from an aggregator like OverDrive. Pls.' 56.1 ¶¶ 577-578. This market generates at least tens of millions of dollars a year for the Publishers. Id. ¶¶ 170, 172. And IA supplants the Publishers' place in this market. IA offers users complete ebook editions of the Works in Suit without IA's having paid the Publishers a fee to license those ebooks, and it gives libraries an alternative to buying ebook licenses from the Publishers. Indeed, IA pitches the Open Libraries project to libraries in part as a way to help libraries avoid paying for licenses. See Pls.' 56.1 ¶ 383 (presentation IA gave to libraries asserting that pairing with IA means that "You Don't Have to Buy It Again!"); id. ¶ 382 (different presentation promising that the Open Libraries project "ensures that a library will not have to buy the same content over and over, simply because of a change in format"). IA thus "brings to the marketplace a competing substitute" for library ebook editions of the Works in Suit, "usurp[ing] a market that properly belongs to the copyright-holder."

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There is so much misinformation/confusion about this... they go sued after lending "unlimited" copies, but they were sued (and lost) for lending exclusive copies (controlled digital lending):

> “At bottom, [the Internet Archive’s] fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan wrote. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.” [0]

[0]: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/teaching...

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> The project was met with significant legal challenges from authors and publishers which was eventually overcome

I don't think they were overcome. As far as I remember Google couldn't make the books available so they abandoned the project. They possess the scans (if they didn't delete them) but they won't be made public.

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IIRC the courts ruled that because it would be implausibe for a person to use google books previews to read an entire work (you'd have to make a whole bunch of separate accounts to do so), it could not plausibly impact the market for that work.
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Like all things, Google will eventually realize they cannot make significant ad revenue and they will eventually give up and discontinue serving this, though I doubt it's more than a scratch in terms of disk space.

It's great they did this, but the Google that is today cannot be trusted with data of public value anymore.

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It's data for their AI pipeline. Basically digital gold.
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They are also an AI company now. Why would they stop?
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Also, why would they ever share their collection?

Book scans, secreted away, are worthless to the public.

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They could use them as training data, without providing access the actual books.
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Internet Archive version: https://openlibrary.org/

Info on where to send books not yet in their collection: https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...

Mobile apps to determine if they need a book: https://help.archive.org/help/donate-books-app-for-ios-and-a...

Web app: https://archive.org/want/?mode=donation_book

For example, I donated a copy of Systems Bible (out of print, hard to find imho) and paid for it to jump the digitization queue (https://archive.org/details/systemsbiblebegi0000gall/). The original book will remain stored as a physical backup. It's not fully publicly available of course due to copyright (it will eventually be made public by the Internet Archive once its copyright expires ~2084 and it enters the public domain), which is where shadow libraries|archives like Anna's Archive and Z-Library fill the gap.

If you have rare books you would like digitized, archived, and distributed, I am very interested in providing assistance.

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As an aside... https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Systems_Bible/mrOsb... (and I haven't hit any "you can't read this" limits yet).

While the hard copy is a bit pricy for my shelf of curious books, it's also available on kindle. https://www.amazon.com/SYSTEMANTICS-SYSTEMS-BIBLE-John-Gall-...

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> While the hard copy is a bit pricy for my shelf of curious books, it's also available on kindle.

I do not recommend Kindle books, as you don't own them and Amazon is closing any DRM loopholes, but I understand that if you must have access to a resource, they are a solution. I'll noodle on wiring up a Kindle so it can step through pages programmatically controlled for CCD capture and OCR using vision LLMs.

Kindle update toughens DRM and ends Libby loophole - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49388279 - August 2026

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