Should Google be allowed to scan books

[Evil Moo]

I'd have to agree with Egaladiest and Bballad on this issue entirely.

~One: If they are only providing snippets, they do not need the entire book. You might as well provide the hungry Google with a loaded gun and a farm animal then not expect them to eat meat for dinner.

~Two: It's clear violation of copyright law. Sure copyright laws are not quite up-to-date, but that is immaterial for this situation. They are taking a full protected and completed product for free without consent. Let's reverse the situation. People would laugh at me if I walked into MS and thought I could just walk out with 100% of the coding for their new OS, Games, and Software--I'm not even a profit business. Google is a profit business; so how is the situation different?

~Three: As stated, this is a Pandora's Box for copyright infringment. If Google gets away with this, technically, I could steal every file, song, movie, data, etc. and hoard it to myself so long as I did not share it. If everyone can do this without consequence, then nobody will even need to share anymore. Peg-legs and eye-patches for everyone!

[MURACU]

The whole question of why google is scanning the whole book is fairly obvious. Normally if you are trying to look up a subject you have a quote or line to work from. There is no way to know which line in the book will be looked up. As long as Google doesnt allow the down load of the full text then it is no different that what Amazon does when it allows you to read a couple of pages from the book.

Called Google Print, it is a bit like Amazon's feature that lets you search inside a book. Unlike Amazon, where you can then read a few pages from each book you find, Google will only give you enough detail to let you know that you have found what you are looking for.

If you can search inside the book then it is scanned. Funnily enought nobody is sueing amazon for scanning books. I wonder what influence they have with the Americain author Guild.
How much of the really important research material is still covered by copyright. The major works of littrature are already out of copywrite. Most acedemics would have no problem in my opinion with haveing their works on line. If anything it would increase their prestige and job prospects.
I agree someone who writes a book deserves to be paid for their efforts as long as the book is readable. I just dont see how google is going to affect this. The big mistake they made was not asking permission from each author before scaning their works.