To scan or not to scan? (Guardian Unlimited, March 8, 2006) is an blog entry by Culture Vulture Victor Keegan in defense of Google’s scanning of millions of books, including books still under copyright. The comments are good too. The key issue seems to be whether this is covered by “fair use”.
Technically, as Charles Arthur points out, this is blatant infringement. Turn to the front of any book and you will find a paragraph that states that no part of it shall be copied or stored without the publisher’s permission. The University of Michigan is keeping material that is still within copyright “dark” until the copyright runs out, while Google argues that letting people read snippets of copyrighted books is covered by “fair use” provisions of the kind that mean we don’t go to jail for sneaking into Waterstone’s to look up a reference.
I found this from the Google Book Search – News & Views – Media Coverage page.