It seems to me that Google could be of great help to publishers by providing information to them on the number of hits on out-of-print books. For example, if a publisher knew that a particular out-of-print book were generating thousands or tens of thousands of searches every month, maybe that's a book that would make financial sense to put back into print. How else would publishers get that kind of information?

Another option might be a Rhapsody-style subscription service. I pay around 10 bucks a month to listen to some of the million or so tracks available on Rhapsody. I'd pay more than that to have a million searchable books at my fingertips.

Personally, I think there would be very few people who would want to read entire books on-line. I tried reading short books on a Palm device a few years ago, and I never made it thorough a single book. People like books; they don't want to sit in front of the glare of a computer screen for hours. They want the portability of the book, and the ease of reading. But they will sit in front of a computer for hours doing research and book searches. So I don't think that a Google-style system is going to take any revenue from anyone. And actually, having books available on-line would be a way that new authors could develop a readership. Hell, were I an aspiring author with a book I couldn't sell to a publisher I'd PAY Google to scan it and put it online -- and then find out how many hits it was getting.

I appreciate the article's inclusion of the many perspectives that need to be considered in this case.

My stake in this, though I am neither author nor publisher, is that I am a student in a "third world" country. I can try to educate myself the best I can, but the fact that our university and public libraries cannot afford to stock up on important but obscure volumes is limiting. I don't even need the entire book -- just a relevant passage that can lead me to other areas of study.

Google Print and other similar ventures will minimize that problem, if not totally eliminate it. Our libraries will only need to invest in computers and net connections, and in that way the developing world saves millions.

To me, that's a good thing.

It's hard not to be sympathetic; as an academic who routinely publishes without a thought of demanding payback for my labor, I would love to see Google index and make searchable the millions of books that are out of print and available only to those with a University pass.

But Google is breaking the law. If I were to digitize the text of a new book, and allow people to enter search terms on a website to find sentences contained therein, I would clearly be breaking the copyright law. Indeed, just by digitizing the text, and keeping it on more that one hard-drive, I would be breaking the law.

Is the law moral? I agree with Lessig: no, it is not. Copyright laws are restrictive, and the way they are built today, the paralyse our culture. I will not detail Lessig's arguments; people can read them elsewhere.

At the same time, however, the law applies to us all. Google should not be able to use its money and its influence to break it. If they want to do Google Print -- and I think they should -- they should work to change the laws. They should fund (ugh) lobbyists. They should run ads. They should support political candidates who oppose the big-money groups like Disney, the MPAA, and the RIAA, who are sucking the life from our culture, suppressing dissent, and making millions off of Steamboat Willie and corporation-friendly versions of hip-hop, rap and folk.

I ran into the scenario described as an undergraduate. I was working on a engineering project and needed information about low speed areodynamics. I found references to a book that I thought might be useful. The book was out of print, self-published, and the author was dead. No feasible way to buy a new copy and the author would not benefit from me buying a used copy even if I could find one. I managed to get a copy a month later through an inter-library loan request and I didn't feel too guilty about making a photocopy of the parts I needed. Google could have saved me a month. Or perhaps given me access to a better, newer book in print, that I could have paid for. Scholarship requires access to books. If Google can provide that access, scholarship should accelerate. Good for scholars, and good for Google.

Just because I built a house, it doesn't mean I have rights to the sales of maps that include the house, even if it has pictures of the cool front porch I designed. I can't even opt out of being on the map. Google books seems to be the same idea to me.

Aside from the legal issues, Google's idea is bad for three reasons.

First, flooding people with texts is not the same thing as increasing their knowledge or understanding or access to information. I can only imagine that a Google search of a vast library or texts would be similar to a Google search of the Internet, which means that if you typed in a word or phrase you would get back millions of useless references and links to books that have nothing other than a commercial connection to what you are actually trying to find.

Second, it is bizarre to imagine that there is one book tucked away in a giant library that will be the answer to all your problems if only you knew where to find it. No one book is ever all that important. In terms of factual information: if you can find a fact written in one book, you can find it written in a hundred books. There is no book that has hidden in it a great but useful secret that has failed to come to the attention of lots and lots of people before you got the notion to Google search some obscure phrase. This is especially true in the sciences, and most especially true of scientific information that would be useful to an undergraduate in college, a high school student, or a little kid. A qualified specialist working in any academic field already knows the literature of that field, and so a Google library would not be particularly useful to people who actually know what books are in the library and what those books are for. Research is not about finding quotations in books algorithmically.

Third, nothing is precious that isn't scarce. Time is scarce. Books are scarce. The time we have to learn about what is in books is scarce. For these reasons, knowing how to do research in a library is a skill. Learning how to use books and do research in a library cannot be replaced by a Google search algorithm. Making such a search technique available to young people would just make them dumber.

The whole idea smacks of a misunderstanding of what books are, what books are for, and how books should be used.