Google is coming under increasing fire for its controversial book scanning project. The company is scanning hundreds of thousands of books from several major university libraries, with the intention of making the searchable and viewable on the Web. Each viewed page will, of course, have Google ads.
Why would prestigious universities like Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford agree to participate in such a bald assault on copyrights? Most likely, Google is giving these libraries a big chunk of money.
Google's feeble excuse is that authors who don't want to participate can opt out. The company is abusing copyright law, which says the copyright owner is responsible for enforcing copyright. But what Google is doing is ethically odious, and the law was never intended to give projects like this free rain to trample copyright.