[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]Because it violates copyright laws. Not just US laws, but international too. It's a pretty egregious violation at that. Google had to know it was bad going in, but their strategy has been to go forward with it and try to negotiate a deal later. Remember, this isn't just public domain stuff, it's not even just the out-of-print material: Google is essentially trying to scan several college libraries' collections into their database and make them freely available. I love the idea, but if you're going to break the law doing it then you need to go back to the drawing board. Personally this whole thing just highlights for me the need for governments to start digitizing and making available media in their national libraries online, at the very least once the copyright wears off. We're reached the point in tech development where the average person's closet could hold an NAS or two with plain .txt files comprising the entire book collection of the US Library of Congress, and there's certainly a demand for the material no matter how old. I don't know about efforts abroad, but in the US there has been precious little effort put into making these materials available online.[/citation]
But even then, there would have to be some very careful checking done to be certain that the work in question was actually out of copyright. Don't forget, the US library of congress 'requires' x # of copies of every work ever published in the US. And they also add on some other works as well, so it will not be all cut and dried even if the US library of congress tries to go this route. Back several years ago, when this was first mooted, all i could see was problems. Now that google is trying to implement this scheme, the problems that I originally envisioned have reared their heads.
Some 'solutions' have been put forward in the case of patents. An international patent registry, anyone? We see how well that is going.