Reading books for free with Google Books- sinful?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Thyme
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

Thyme

Guest
Most of them are previews but many have a large content, or even the entire book.

What is your opinion on this and what do you think of using it just to view a couple of pages from one book, and what do you think of reading an entire book?
 
I’ve seen those… I guess the question is, are they there legally? or did someone just upload them and the information isn’t monitored?

the reason this is important is because it’s not stealing if it’s MEANT to be free. For example, I sometimes watch a (foreign) tv show that the channel puts up on the web. It’s meant to be free by the network that shows it so it’s not a sin to watch. But if I had obtained the show for free when it is only offered for a fee by whoever made it, that could be wrong yes.
 
Google books is fine, they take down anything a publisher requests be removed and all their uploads are pre-approved. You are almost guaranteed that anything you see on there is being provided either because the copyright is expired/open or the published wanted it there. Unlike youtube the nature of Google books allows it to be pretty strictly controlled.
 
Now if you want a real moral conundrum the US government has ruled that it is not illegal to host media that can not be reasonably obtained due to it not being put in circulation for a period of so many years. For if a company owning the rights to a game for the old Atari 2600 doesn’t make any effort to make their games commercially available (such as they often do with one of those 100+ game packs) then I could legally host a free downloadable copy of that game on a website and at that point legally it is no longer considered stealing as far as the government is concerned, but preserving media. Whether getting involved in that stuff is acceptable is hard to determine. On one hand pretty much everyone who has a vested interest in such things knows the law and will preserve their right to distribute their media through some action. On the other hand one could argue that the government has simply legalized thievery and forced people to protect property they shouldn’t have to protect.
 
Thank you for those answers. They’re really helpful.

Most of the books are old, so I’m assuming that they have been uploaded legally.

However, there are some For Dummies books, with a large preview. I don’t know if it would be sinful to view these preview and not buy the real books. They contain so much in the previews that you don’t really need to buy them.
 
Thyme said:
Thank you for those answers. They’re really helpful.

Most of the books are old, so I’m assuming that they have been uploaded legally.

However, there are some For Dummies books, with a large preview. I don’t know if it would be sinful to view these preview and not buy the real books. They contain so much in the previews that you don’t really need to buy them.
Click to expand...
Books published before 1923 are in the Public Domain under US copyright laws. After that, it’s a bit complicated. You can check here for more info.
 
Thyme said:
Thank you for those answers. They’re really helpful.

Most of the books are old, so I’m assuming that they have been uploaded legally.

However, there are some For Dummies books, with a large preview. I don’t know if it would be sinful to view these preview and not buy the real books. They contain so much in the previews that you don’t really need to buy them.
Click to expand...
Google doesn’t show large portions of text without the author/publishers permission. With things like the For Dummies books that are an extensive series this is a form of marketing since they hope that people will get attached to the series and purchase other books from it, or possibly decide they want the information that is blotted out. There are some instances in which published have had problems with Google books, but their books are the ones that either aren’t on their at all, or only show a few lines of text.
 
PatrickSebast said:
Google doesn’t show large portions of text without the author/publishers permission. With things like the For Dummies books that are an extensive series this is a form of marketing since they hope that people will get attached to the series and purchase other books from it, or possibly decide they want the information that is blotted out. There are some instances in which published have had problems with Google books, but their books are the ones that either aren’t on their at all, or only show a few lines of text.
Click to expand...
You’d think after reading a handful of Dummies books that a person wouldn’t be such a Dummie anymore, no? 😃

Aside: They wouldn’t sell quite as well if they called them (Whatever) for Fools or (Whatever) for Complete Idiots. 😃 …which is sometimes what I feel like trying to learn Adobe Illustrator or Publisher.
 
I wouldn’t worry about it. If the books are there legitimately, then feel free to get whatever benefit you can from reading them online. No sin at all there. If you enjoy the (e-)book and feel like the author deserves some extra return, then order a physical copy of the book by all means, but you aren’t compelled to do so in any way.
 
Thank you very much for your replies! They are all excellent 😃

It’s a relief not having to buy a book just because I want to read two pages of it lol.
 
The books that google itself scans and puts up are in the public domain.
Others are put up by the author or by the publisher for promotion purpoeses.
Some are put up by ministries with the purpose of evangelizing or teaching.
 
Thyme said:
Most of them are previews but many have a large content, or even the entire book.

What is your opinion on this and what do you think of using it just to view a couple of pages from one book, and what do you think of reading an entire book?
Click to expand...
if they are posted on a reliable site and available for reading, the assumption is that they are there legally until proven otherwise, so read on.
 
Most responses so far are inaccurate. Google put up a lot of books without permission. They were sued. They now have to pay:

googlebooksettlement.com/

Since they uploaded so may books, now visual artists are suing them for use of their images without permission:

businessweek.com/news/2010-04-07/visual-artists-file-class-action-suit-against-google-update1-.html

I’m not saying google is evil. Today, it appears that all book excerpts and entire books are on google legally. Just because a book is old it does not mean it automatically goes into the public domain. Public domain simply means anyone can reprint that book. However, copyrights can be renewed.

Hope this helps,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Most responses so far are inaccurate. Google put up a lot of books without permission. They were sued. They now have to pay:

googlebooksettlement.com/

Since they uploaded so may books, now visual artists are suing them for use of their images without permission:

businessweek.com/news/2010-04-07/visual-artists-file-class-action-suit-against-google-update1-.html

I’m not saying google is evil. Today, it appears that all book excerpts and entire books are on google legally. Just because a book is old it does not mean it automatically goes into the public domain. Public domain simply means anyone can reprint that book. However, copyrights can be renewed.

Hope this helps,
Ed
Click to expand...
I just want to refocus the point that as of today all the books up on Google books are there legally in case anyone ignored that portion of Ed’s post when reading it. Also Google never displayed anything more than very small portions(which fell into fair use) of the text of books they weren’t given permission to use. The lawsuit was mostly over googles right to upload the texts into their database for free, and now google has agreed to pay copyright owners when it uploads their books. So there has never really been a question of whether reading from Google books was stealing even in its early days, there are just other questions regarding Google’s actions that don’t directly impact us.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top