According to CNet News, The Authors Guild in America has filed a lawsuit against the Google corporation to get them prevented from continuing the Google Print program. For those who aren't aware, the Print program is a project to scan the archives of books from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University. The idea is to make their entire texts searchable on the internet to provide a few sentences as excerpts and offer links to publishers and shops where users can purchase the texts.

Now I don't normally get involved in the sueing culture in America, but this is just stupid. The Authors Guild argue that "It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied." and says the Print Program is a "massive copyright infringement".

What utter bollocks, quite frankly. Have none of the members of the Guild ever gone into a library or shop? Have they not used computers to find the books they are looking for, walked up to a shelf and pulled down a book? Have they not browsed through the book, checking the off paragraph to see if the book is what they want?

What Google is doing is bringing a huge collection of books to the masses. They are providing a service to the world that is analogous to that of a book shop. They are allowing users to search their "shelves" of books which thankfully in the digital world can be "inifinite" in size and allowing users to see a couple of sentences around their search terms. How on earth can annoy say that the Print Program is any more of a copy right infringement than all the book shops and libraries around the world?

And not only is this a fantastic move forward for society but by allowing easy and quick access to these texts, the authors work gets free publicity (it's not costing the Universities anything to be included in the program). If I were an author, I would applaud the efforts of Google in their program and thank them for giving my books the opportuinty to be read by many people who would likely never have found them.

Yes, there is the arguement that Google will make money from adding their AdSense program to the Print pages, but if associations such as the Authors Guild were as forward thinking as the folks at Google, they could have got in there first and provided a service such as this. If they had done that, there would be no need for a profit making company to move the world forward in this way.

What is wrong with some people? It's just crazy.