That said, almost everyone in this dispute is behaving selfishly. Google is the worst. It wants the U.S. copyright of virtually every author on the planet set aside–but just for it. Microsoft and Amazon are upset over the advantage that would give Google and not the harm it does to writers. If they could do what Google wants to be, they’d be as quiet as church mice.

Libraries are downright weird, acting as if having a single copy of a book in their collection allows them to copy it (digitally) with utter abandon. Without them, Google’s plan would grind to a halt, since Google is too cheap to even buy one copy of the books it is scanning.

Government agencies are focusing on the anti-trust elements of this dispute, which is another way of saying that government lawyers see it as a lucrative, make-work project for themselves and their cronies. If they have their way, this dispute will take so long, many of this books will be out of copyright.

Few seem to care that the intended victim–indeed the only real victim–is the author whose copyright is being cast aside for what Google claims is a grand vision, but which is, in fact, just another bit of digital space on which Google intends to plaster ads.