Google’s ambition to create the world’s largest digital library and bookstore has run into the reality of a 300-year-old legal concept: copyright.
The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.
The decision throws into legal limbo one of the most ambitious
undertakings in Google’s history, and it brings into sharp focus
concerns about the company’s growing power over information.
While the profit potential of the book project is not clear, the
effort is one of the pet projects of Larry
Page, the Google co-founder who is set to become its chief
executive next month. And the project has wide support inside
the company, whose corporate mission is to organize all of the
world’s information.
[...]
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.htm