Just in time for Halloween, Google has extended its quest to organize (and store) the world's information to scary stories. Really, really old scary stories.
These stories are so old that the copyright has run out. That is how Google can legally scan every page and post them on the internet. If you (or Google) tried to do that with any recent publication, no matter the reason, you would likely see the inside of a courthouse faster than you can say 'fair use.'
But that's neither here nor there right now... since the only good scary stories were all written long enough ago that they are now in the public domain.
Want to read Poe, page by page? It's there.
Bram Stoker's Dracula? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow? Yup, all there. All in their pseudo-paper digital glory.
Now this could lead into a whole discussion about Intellectual Property rights and (mostly) restrictions regarding what can and cannot be done with works of literature and music, but I really don't have the energy. Basically, IP is BS. Just like DRM is CRAP.
...Yay for Halloween!
1 comment:
Hehehe but I don't agree that IP is BS. If anyone could have written it, no one would bother to look it up centuries later
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