On Google Print

In December 2004, Google started the Google Print Library Project to digitize the entire collections of five research libraries: Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Michigan, and the New York Public Library. Users are able to search for relevant content (using google's search algorithm -of course) in the entire content of the book. If the books are in the public domain users can read the entire book. If the book is still copyrighted then the user can only view a couple of pages at a time; usually the page you searched plus 2 pages before and after. A very recent security addition requires users to log in to google if the book is copyrighted (I was able to log in using my gmail name and password). Print.google already used cookies to make sure users were not doing anything dishonest (check your browsers cookie folder for print.google.com) like trying to see an entire book in one sitting. Cookies just identify the computer and not the individual person. Other copyright protections include disabling copy and pasting, disabling the save image function, and disabling printing.

With every new technology there are new hacks. Ironically, Aaron Boodman, a programmer from google wrote an extension for the fire fox browser (www.greasemonkeyed.com) that allows you to copy and paste the pages from google. A college student named Isometrick, another hacker, wrote code that manipulated print.google cookies so that you can see the entire text from a copyrighted book. The hack even created a complete pdf! He sent in his hack to google in hopes of getting hired, but only received a t-shirt and some pens. Hacking for Christ (still trying to figure out if they are being sarcastic) figured out how to hack the css of google.print to disable the transparent gif covering the page enabling users to copy the page image.

I can still take a screenshot using mac os x (shift-open apple-4) -not that I would want to.

I will edit and type more in the morning (its 2:30 am!)