Comment by gnu8
13 years ago
It's baffling that Google requires a captcha to download this book, which prevents anyone (actually no one) from efficiently downloading all of these books, and that google adds a ridiculous page to the front, self-servingly begging the reader not to remove, but really just serving as an ad for Google. I'm not saying Google doesn't deserve credit for digitizing these, but they should not be restricting access or defacing the book. The book is public domain and belongs to everyone. It's not more content for them to use to drive ad revenue. So much for "don't be evil".
A minute of googling and you can find a direct download from other databases, for instance: http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu/bib.php?m=15 . But yes, that's awful that Google is blocking this stuff -- in my country it is even entirely blocked becuase "Google Play does not offer books yet".
I thought the same thing, particularly since I had a really hard time getting a readable captcha. It is somewhat ironic that google invented a device for automatically digitizing a book and then prevents people from automatically downloading them. I'm less concerned about their front piece - they do deserve credit for the preservation effort. I also don't mind eg, the Internet archive framing their web archive.