[INDOLOGY] protocol of Google Books ...?

[Dominik Wujastyk]

​Copyright is a sneaky creature.  It's likely that you own the copyright of
your thesis, but not certain.  If you received a financial grant ​during
the time you wrote it, then it might be "work for hire" and the grant body
might own the copyright.  Or the university might own the copyright.
That's quite likely, in fact.  Technically, universities own the copyright
of all work written by any of their employees, including professors.  Most
universities ignore this fact; the more legally-aware one's have a
copyright-waiver in their employment terms somewhere.   Most universities
also require students to deposit a copy of their theses with the
university, physically or as a PDF; that too may involve a transfer of
rights.  So, it's possible that a university has the copyright to your
thesis, in which case, they also have the right to give Google permission
to copy it.

I have written to ScribD in the past, asking them to take down dozens of my
articles that had been reproduced there.  The process was a bit
time-consuming, but ScribD did comply eventually and the illegal copies
diasappeared.

I'm sure you can write to Google and ask them to take down your thesis.

Best,


--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk* <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
University of Alberta, Canada

<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/goog_1525257691>
​sas.ualberta.ca​


On 19 October 2016 at 19:46, rajam <rajam at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I don’t understand the protocol of Google Books.
>
> Recently, I came to know that Google Books have PDF-ed my Ph.D. thesis
> and publicized it.
>
> I was shocked to know about it.
>
> 1. What happened to the copyright to the author, me in this case?
>
> 2. Authors may have plans to revise their graduate-level theses and
> improve on them before bringing them to the public. To grab such effort in
> the middle is like collapsing a quiche in the making or thwarting a fetus’
> growth. Absolutely unacceptable.
>
> Has something like this happened to anyone of our colleagues? Please let
> me know how to teach Google Books to follow scholarly norms.
>
> Thanks and regards,
> rajam
>
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