Google Book Search IS page citeable (correction)

Jeff Bartelma (Book Search, Product Manager, at Google) has corrected our suggestion, from last week, that Google Book Search had abandoned print-page/web-page correspondence.

He is absolutely right. The link to page 34 of Skottowe's Life of Shakespeare is fine. We are glad to be corrected on the point, since reliably precise citation must be the cornerstone of the global library service that Google Book Search should become.

No Google lawyer has chipped in to address the complaint about unavailable (to ex-US IP addresses) public domain works and Google's copyright hassles. But, to be fair to Google, its hardly their fault if copyright terms and fair use provisions are different in the US, the European Union (Belgium, France) and other countries. The law and the coherence of literary copyright, not Google, will be the ultimate loser if 'proxy IP addresses' are used to run circles round 'national' interpretations of copyright and the efforts of Google-style aggregators to work with such rules. National interpretations of copyright do not square with global technology platforms.