Technically off topic but I hope you could help
I hope this is not *too* off-topic, since it isn't about Gutenberg but it is hopefully a topic of interest... I want to see a book at Google Books, The Secret Tomb (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Secret_Tomb.html?id=0NMCTgniOIsC. This book is published in 1923 as can be seen from the first pages, so it became public domain this month. Google Books has a "Report an Issue" link which includes an option "I’d like to see the entire book, and I believe the book is in the public domain". I reported it and got a form letter reply from someone who obviously didn't understand my request and claimed that according to the publisher, the book was produced in 2009 (maybe, but it was obviously just a scan of a book from 1923, with a generic cover tacked on by a "publisher"). The book doesn't seem to be available on archive.org or on Project Gutenberg. Has anyone here had experience trying to escalate a request for a public domain book from Google Books?
Thanks for your note, Ken. The list has been quiet lately, so any discussion is welcome! Project Gutenberg has a deep but infrequently exercised relationship with The Internet Archive. But we don't really have a relationship with Google - we helped them to harvest our collection, years ago, but don't have anyone to contact there. For https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Secret_Tomb.html?id=0NMCTgniOIsC it seems clear that the main content came from a modern reprint. In Project Gutenberg's case, we do NOT automatically assume that that type of reprint is all in the public domain. This is because there are acts of authorship that could be added to the reprint, and which might garner a new copyright. See our "copyright how-to" and "no sweat of the brow copyright how-to" at https://www.gutenberg.org for our guidance on this. BTW, this isn't in Project Gutenberg, and not in progress. If someone obtains a copy we can use (print or scans), Distributed Proofreaders would love to get the request for digitization: https://www.pgdp.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=66222 For Project Gutenberg to determine this is in the public domain in the US (via https://copy.pglaf.org) we would want title page and verso, and also some sort of assurance that the scanned book matches the 1923 print edition. For example, we would leave out modern artwork, index, footnotes, intro, etc. if the rest is in the public domain. I hope this response is helpful. I would not expect Google to instantly change status for a 2009 reprint of a 1923 publication, for the same reasons that PG would not. However, if you can find this in a library somewhere, perhaps it could be scanned - even by The Internet Archive (which takes requests and donations). Best, Greg Newby On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 01:47:45PM -0500, Ken Arromdee wrote:
I hope this is not *too* off-topic, since it isn't about Gutenberg but it is hopefully a topic of interest...
I want to see a book at Google Books, The Secret Tomb (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Secret_Tomb.html?id=0NMCTgniOIsC.
This book is published in 1923 as can be seen from the first pages, so it became public domain this month. Google Books has a "Report an Issue" link which includes an option "I’d like to see the entire book, and I believe the book is in the public domain".
I reported it and got a form letter reply from someone who obviously didn't understand my request and claimed that according to the publisher, the book was produced in 2009 (maybe, but it was obviously just a scan of a book from 1923, with a generic cover tacked on by a "publisher").
The book doesn't seem to be available on archive.org or on Project Gutenberg.
Has anyone here had experience trying to escalate a request for a public domain book from Google Books?
Dr. Gregory B. Newby Chief Executive and Director Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation www.gutenberg.org A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with EIN 64-6221541 gbnewby@pglaf.org
On Wed, 23 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
For Project Gutenberg to determine this is in the public domain in the US (via https://copy.pglaf.org) we would want title page and verso, and also some sort of assurance that the scanned book matches the 1923 print edition. For example, we would leave out modern artwork, index, footnotes, intro, etc. if the rest is in the public domain.
The title page and verso are available in the excerpt that Google Books shows. They show copyright in 1923. The publisher seems to be one that reprints a lot of public domain works, far too many to add original content to each one. I doubt there is any new material except the cover, although since Google Books won't show all the pages it's impossible to tell for sure. There's also an oddity: When I go to the publisher's web site and look for works by Maurice LeBlanc, I see a bunch of other books, but all from prior to 1923. This particular book is missing from the publisher's site, even though it obviously did come from that publisher (having a similar style cover). My guess is that the publisher at some point reprinted the book in the belief that it was public domain, then realized that it wasn't, and took the book off their site. Now that we are in 2019, it's public domain for real.
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 01:48:48AM -0500, Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Wed, 23 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
For Project Gutenberg to determine this is in the public domain in the US (via https://copy.pglaf.org) we would want title page and verso, and also some sort of assurance that the scanned book matches the 1923 print edition. For example, we would leave out modern artwork, index, footnotes, intro, etc. if the rest is in the public domain.
The title page and verso are available in the excerpt that Google Books shows. They show copyright in 1923.
Yes, I saw this too.
The publisher seems to be one that reprints a lot of public domain works, far too many to add original content to each one. I doubt there is any new material except the cover, although since Google Books won't show all the pages it's impossible to tell for sure.
It is possible by comparing the full 2009 edition with a printed copy from 1923. It's not impossible, it is just extra work. In this type of situation, it might be easier to obtain a 1923 printed publication and scan it.
There's also an oddity: When I go to the publisher's web site and look for works by Maurice LeBlanc, I see a bunch of other books, but all from prior to 1923. This particular book is missing from the publisher's site, even though it obviously did come from that publisher (having a similar style cover).
Or maybe an impostor. That happens, sometimes. Since it was ostensibly printed in 2009, what if the publisher never actually had permission from the copyright holder?
My guess is that the publisher at some point reprinted the book in the belief that it was public domain, then realized that it wasn't, and took the book off their site. Now that we are in 2019, it's public domain for real.
Indeed, this is a possibility. Perhaps it's something you would want to try discussing with the publisher. My main message is that the availability (or partial availability) of scans doesn't mean that those scans are the best source for making a Project Gutenberg eBook. In this case, access to the printed book from 1923 seems necessary to determine whether the scans are usable. Best, Greg
In this case, access to the printed book from 1923 seems necessary to determine whether the scans are usable.
I haven't done a scan in a while, so I ordered a 1923 1st edition of this book from a used book reseller online, and I will submit it to PG for clearance, and then presumably to DP to do with as they like -- although if anyone else wants a copy of the scans after PG clearance I would be happy to give it to them. Yay to the end of the Mickey Mouse drought! Jim Adcock
Quoting Greg Newby <gbnewby@pglaf.org>:
Or maybe an impostor. That happens, sometimes. Since it was ostensibly printed in 2009, what if the publisher never actually had permission from the copyright holder?
I've seen a few scans of books uploaded on the Internet Archive that are very obviously not pre-1923, but have the copyright dates (and only those) changed by somebody creative in Photoshop to some much earlier date (e.g. 1916), to pretend they are public domain. Happens a lot with scans of Indian origin for some reason. Just going to the preface confirms this fraud. Sometimes, metadata on archive.org is wrong as wel, listing 1923 for a 1932 book. For those reasons, I always verify the publication years against library catalogues, and double check with bibliographies to see if no illicit material slips through. Jeroen.
On Thu, 24 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
It is possible by comparing the full 2009 edition with a printed copy from 1923. It's not impossible, it is just extra work.
In this type of situation, it might be easier to obtain a 1923 printed publication and scan it.
If you have to have the original in order to prove that it's okay to scan the reprint, that essentially means that reprints are useless as a source of scans at all (barring edge cases like originals that you don't have permission to scan but do have permission to read). Relatively recently the Pulp Scans list has shared scans of Weird Tales reprints, including reprints that come from 1923 and have therefore just become public domain. Original Weird Tales from that year are very valuable and the chance that anyone's going to scan them all or even have them is negligible. It's going to be either allow scans of reprints, or lose those issues forever. (Weird Tales is also a good example of how Project Gutenberg's image policy is terrible, since it has ads and illustrations that won't get preserved without using high resolution.)
Quoting Ken Arromdee <arromdee@gmx.com>:
On Thu, 24 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
It is possible by comparing the full 2009 edition with a printed copy from 1923. It's not impossible, it is just extra work.
In this type of situation, it might be easier to obtain a 1923 printed publication and scan it.
If you have to have the original in order to prove that it's okay to scan the reprint, that essentially means that reprints are useless as a source of scans at all (barring edge cases like originals that you don't have permission to scan but do have permission to read).
That is right, but a lot of reprints are facsimiles, and in this case (if it is mentioned, or very clear from the appearance), no need to access the original. I've got several clearances based on this. Jeroen
On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 11:44:20AM -0500, jeroen@bohol.ph wrote:
Quoting Ken Arromdee <arromdee@gmx.com>:
On Thu, 24 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
It is possible by comparing the full 2009 edition with a printed copy from 1923. It's not impossible, it is just extra work.
In this type of situation, it might be easier to obtain a 1923 printed publication and scan it.
If you have to have the original in order to prove that it's okay to scan the reprint, that essentially means that reprints are useless as a source of scans at all (barring edge cases like originals that you don't have permission to scan but do have permission to read).
That is right, but a lot of reprints are facsimiles, and in this case (if it is mentioned, or very clear from the appearance), no need to access the original. I've got several clearances based on this.
Jeroen
Correct. We clear hundreds of facsimiles every year. That is not the situation that Ken brought to us. With a facsimile, the printed book (or scans) are basically indistinguishable from the original. It might have some minimalist info on the verso that indicates it's a facsimile. Most don't have modern stuff like LoC cataloging info in the book. That's not the situation you brought. You brought a 2009 publication with a new cover, so it is not so clearly a facsimile. "Proving" it's a facsimile require comparing to a known earlier work. Concerning (Ken's) your comment about Weird etc.: I don't know what scanning policy you are writing about. It's perfectly acceptable to include high resolution scans. Best, - Greg
On Sat, 26 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
Concerning (Ken's) your comment about Weird etc.: I don't know what scanning policy you are writing about. It's perfectly acceptable to include high resolution scans.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:HTML_FAQ#8._Recommendation:_Images "Since most people will be viewing these images in a browser on a screen with a resolution below or around 1000 pixels wide, you should mostly make your images not much wider than 600 pixels. If you have a 2000- or 3000-pixel-wide image derived from an original scan, you need to look at resizing it." (Is epub generated from HTML? That could compound the problem since epub is often read on tablets which have higher resolution than PC screens). I see this is a wiki, so I could delete the text in question, but I don't know what I could replace it with since I don't know what sizes PG really recommends. Also, this guideline seems to reflect actual practice for many books on pg, and even if those books were scanned years ago, the images in them are now permanently small, since nobody's going to go through the back catalog and rescan everything that has images.
On Sun, Jan 27, 2019 at 12:04:01PM -0500, Ken Arromdee wrote:
On Sat, 26 Jan 2019, Greg Newby wrote:
Concerning (Ken's) your comment about Weird etc.: I don't know what scanning policy you are writing about. It's perfectly acceptable to include high resolution scans.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:HTML_FAQ#8._Recommendation:_Images
"Since most people will be viewing these images in a browser on a screen with a resolution below or around 1000 pixels wide, you should mostly make your images not much wider than 600 pixels. If you have a 2000- or 3000-pixel-wide image derived from an original scan, you need to look at resizing it."
I updated this a bit: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:HTML_FAQ#8._Recommendation:_Images Your quote is actually from H.10, which seems ok (even though it is no longer 2004!). Someday we'll do a large-scale update. - Greg
(Is epub generated from HTML? That could compound the problem since epub is often read on tablets which have higher resolution than PC screens).
I see this is a wiki, so I could delete the text in question, but I don't know what I could replace it with since I don't know what sizes PG really recommends. Also, this guideline seems to reflect actual practice for many books on pg, and even if those books were scanned years ago, the images in them are now permanently small, since nobody's going to go through the back catalog and rescan everything that has images.
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On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 01:47:45PM -0500, Ken Arromdee wrote:
I hope this is not *too* off-topic, since it isn't about Gutenberg but it is hopefully a topic of interest...
I want to see a book at Google Books, The Secret Tomb (https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Secret_Tomb.html?id=0NMCTgniOIsC. ...
Greg Weeks <gweeks.durendal@gmail.com> sent this to me: "I find I can't reply to email on the pg list any more. In regards to The Secret Tomb by Maurice LeBlanc I have a set of scans of the original 1923 publication being sent to me by John Betancourt at Wildside Press. It will take a couple of weeks for me to get them. My intent is to send them through PGDP when I get them if Jim Adcock's copy falls through. If you can reply on the list with this information I would appreciate it. Greg Weeks"
participants (4)
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Greg Newby -
James Adcock -
jeroen＠bohol.ph -
Ken Arromdee