I think I’ve come across the most innovative idea I’ve seen in a long time…doing something good while eliminating SPAM.

reCAPTCHA is a project of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and is stopping my comment SPAM while digitizing books that will be available at the Internet Archive. Very, very cool. I wish I would have thought of it. :)

I sent them an email to ask who will own the digital indexes they are creating of these books. I suspect it won’t matter as long as it’s freely available on the Internet Archive.

I’m positive there will be many more “enhance the world” ideas that come out of the Internet age.

UPDATED: The folks gave me back a response within an hour.

  from reCAPTCHA Support <support@recaptcha.net>      
  to Neal Harmon  
  date   Sep 19, 2007 11:02 AM  
  subject   Re: Rights  

Hi,

When we put books through the reCAPTCHA process, we make the results available under the same terms as the original version of the work in question.

– Hide quoted text –

On 9/19/07, Neal Harmon wrote:

So,

I’m curious because the information didn’t seem readily available on your website. Who owns the text and indexes after people decipher them? Will they be owned and openly available at the Internet Archive?


— Neal


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