Via The Chronicle of Higher Education, I’ve just discovered that Google has just announced the launch of an initiative that permits distribution of Creative Commons licensed works via Google Books.
The announcement indicates that this option is available as an account setting to members of their Partner Program.
Creative Licensed works will be identifiable by the standard Creative Commons logo and links to the full license, and will include download links. Google continues:
“…if the rightsholder has chosen to allow people to modify their work, readers can even create a mashup–say, translating the book into Esperanto, donning a black beret, and performing the whole thing to music on YouTube.”
Google’s post indicates that a few authors have already taken advantage of this option, including Lawrence Lessig, whose book “Code: version 2.0” is embedded below.
The download link doesn’t seem to appear in embedded instances, so to access the book or see how and where the license is displayed please see its Google Books page.
I must say, that for all the criticism that Google cops from people concerned about it holding too much of the world’s data, Google seems to have a great deal of dedication to the open community. Google images recently included the option to restrict searches by open licenses , Google Code continues to offer a workspace for collaboration on software and application development, and they continue to support the Summer of Code program.
This is not to try and discount peoples concerns or fears about one company knowing so much about it, merely to suggest that Google does a lot to try and contribute to the open source community as well.
