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Originally Posted by Brian
...but as long as they respect the wishes of the copyright holders and they aren't violating copyright law...
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But isn't that the problem, at least from a legal standpoint? Under the fair use clause, (I am on thin ice here, but this is at least how I understood it), you
may scan - for your own purposes - a copyright protected work that you've previously bought. Google has neither bought the books from the libraries they plans to scan, nor do they intend to keep the scans private to themselves.
What made me kinda anxious was when Google offered publishers an opting-out. They asked publishers for
a list of the books that the latter didn't want Google to scan. Should it really be that easy for a publicly traded company to change laws to its own will, no matter how altruistic its goals? Shouldn't it have been Google to write a list of books they plan to scan and to send this list to the publishers asking for permission?