InsideHighered.com does a nice wrap-up of a panel discussion on the Google project to digitize libraries at Harvard and Stanford, the universities of Oxford and Michigan, and the New York Public Library.

This isn’t a simple right-and-wrong debate, but it certainly raises questions of copyright that should concern every author or potential author.

Imagine if you could go online and download every song ever written for free. You can try to do that, but it’s pretty hard these days. Google would do with books exactly what the RIAA has been fighting with music….