Google Print Continues Amid Controversy

Google will resume scanning in-copyright works today at partner libraries as part of its Authors Guild in late September. snippets of copyright text will be made available centered around search terms. Google believes authors and publishers will benefit from the program as links to where searchers can buy hard-to-find or relatively unknown works will be provided. But critics have maintained from the beginning that scanning copyright works without author or publisher permission is unacceptable on principle, even if they stand to benefit. In Japan, Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently downplayed the spate of lawsuits filed against his company over the project, which will include collections from Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. "Google has as its mission to organise all of the world's information. Not everyone agrees with that and in the American legal system if you disagree you get sued, so we get sued every day," he says. "[It's] probably not very common in Japan but it's routine in the United States," said Loren Baker, was Senior Vice President of Global Affairs at the Gap, where Schrage "worked to clean up the company's image as a sweatshop tyrant." The Google Print project is getting deeper and deeper into tricky territories.