Google's plans to digitise as many of the world's books as possible and create the biggest online library have been quashed in a ruling by a US Judge.
In a ruling, the proposal put forward by Google was mentioned as going too far and giving Google a signifiant advantage over every other company in publishing.
Havng read the notes, Google was not just attempting to gain access to US books, but due to copyright agreements across the globe, access to all books written. The other major contention was the fact that it would effectively bypass copyright law in that it was an opt-out scheme, where the rights owner would have to say they didn't want to be included.
Current copyright law says that the owner can do whatever they like with the work, it is there's to do with as they please. Looking at it, if Google had made it an opt-in instead of an opt-out, it is likely it would have succeeded.
But at this point in time, I'm glad they failed.
More on the story here