I wrote a little tongue-in-cheek blog about what I think google is trying to do with books a while ago (it's here: <a href="http://newslily.com/blogs/75" rel="nofollow">http://newslily.com/blogs/75</a> if you care to read the whole thing).<p>Basically, I think that google is run by a couple of hugely wealthy nerds who really do just want to do good things. Google isn't trying to steal copyright away from anyone, they're trying to prevent a bunch of human art and knowledge from disappearing in the basement of some demolished library somewhere.<p>One of the major things that people who are against what google is doing here don't seem to understand is that they don't gain exclusive rights to the book, they gain <i>distribution rights</i> to <i>their own</i> digital copies (which they will still have to license from the copyright holders if they want to sell). This isn't different than if I were to go home right now and start scanning my book collection, then go to their respective publishers and try to work a deal with them to distribute the digital copy.<p>I will admit that I might be horribly wrong about this, but this is how I understand it works...
Preservation and proliferation of culture are more important than strict copyright adherance. I am in favor of Google's agressive approach.<p>But if they're ad-wording books that seems clearly unethical.
<i>If we go on doing it [Google's] way, we end up with a wholly-owned list of digitized books, many stolen from their owners, totally controlled, managed, opened and closed to public use, by a profit-making corporation interested in furthering its monopolistic control of information. - Ursula Le Guin</i><p>As opposed to, what exactly, how the publishers of the United States of Fictionalamerica do? Or did Le Guin really thought her publisher was a honest non-profit interested on sharing and expanding the public domain?