Google never had plans to do that. From the outset, Google always said it was just scanning the books to make them searchable, not downloadable (save for works in the public domain).

Making orphan works available was the Authors Guild's idea, but it was shot down by the judge because the AG didn't have sufficient authority to make that kind of deal.

Wrong. The US didn't join the Berne Convention until 1989. All the books in question entered the US public domain due to time-since-publication in the 1960s and 70s. Once a work has entered the US public domain, it stays there even if copyright periods are later lengthened. You can't lengthen a public domain book's copyright retroactively.

I thought space radar was capable of keeping track of things as small as flecks of paint. How can any satellite be too small for it?

Actually, in providing a way to search inside printed books, Google is providing a very useful innovation indeed.

Actually, I'm writing stories about it.

If publishers thought they could get away with closing down the libraries, I don't doubt for one second that they'd try it. They just have the little problem that the concept of public lending libraries pre-dates the modern "where's my money?" era by such a degree that it's effectively grandfathered in. (Same for second-hand bookstores. But boy, you should have heard them yelp when Amazon started listing used books next to new!)

If we take the question seriously, lending books for free in libraries isn't as much of a threat to giving them away free in perpetuity because library books wear out (or expire and require a new purchase after a set number of loans, in the case of library ebooks), and can only be loaned to so many people at once. And they can't be kept forever (unless you crack the DRM on library ebooks, of course), so if you want your own copy of the book you're going to have to buy it. (Or crack the DRM.) There are differences there.

Wow, an Anonymous Coward saying something that makes sense. Now I have seen everything. :)

No, you're wrong. Even all the way back in 2004, Google was talking about making books easy to search, not making them available for free. Making them available was the Authors Guild's idea.

And also, this one.

No, Google never wanted to distribute those works for free. (Except the public domain ones.) That was the Authors Guild's idea.

See my comment further down the thread, and the link therein.

Getting to see the books is not what Google Books is for. It was never what Google Books was for. You've bought into the fallacy promoted by the Authors Guild, who came in after the fact and tried to wangle their lawsuit against Google Books into an orphaned-works library without actually having any authority to do so. Google shrugged and went along with it, because why not, but it was never what they had intended.

From the very beginning, Google Books (nee Google Print) was intended to populate a search database so people could search within paper books as easily as they could search within the web. If the book was still in copyright, then finding that book to read was the searcher's problem. (Interlibrary loan works a treat.) Google was very straightforward about that in early blog posts and publicity about the project. Don't blame them for falling short of the Authors Guild's goals. Those goals were never theirs to begin with. See the link in the first paragraph for more information.

Indeed. And the original article did discuss both writing in Word formats and printing stuff as well.

That's why the comment track is released all by itself. People have to get the original content separately and then play them both at the same time. Same way Rifftrax does its thing. That's perfectly legit under copyright law. Even if it's a derivative work, it falls under the review-and-criticism fair use right.

And, for that matter, Disney recycled the climactic fight scene from Cagliostro into the climax of The Great Mouse Detective. :)