Google's Feast

Seth Finkelstein on the news that Google is now eating all knowledge:

From one perspective, Google is making "fair use" - the use of short extracts, allowed under copyright law - of the books. Possibly a small snippet may be shown, while the searching ability is a valuable "transformative" application. But from a competing perspective, Google is making commercial use of the entire book itself overall. Doing it in little pieces per transaction might then be akin to the "salami slicing" computer crime technique of stealing extremely small amounts from a large number of items.

Salient points, worth chewing over while Google gulps.