Hey Eric - I'm really getting into this one :-)

Right - Google Cache your site, not copy it. Very very slim (more or less undefinable) difference. But you have to allow someone to cache your site to let the www in its current incarnation work :) You can't view cached pages that are behind a secure site, for example, or my personal webmail.

UK libraries don't pay royalties to writers (Charlie's comment was that he gets a percentage of what they charge, which in the UK is nothing, so he gets - nothing).

But back to the real important thing that seems to be worming out of grasp on the Google plans. They are not indexing the books with 30 word snippets... Google plan to scan/OCR the Entire text of a book.

I'm sure no-one complains about having the cover-blurb published anywhere, or even a few paragraphs of flavour for a reviw.

But Google don't own my work - if they want to use it, they can damn well ask me. Even Bewildering Stories, a free e-zine who hold a few of my paltry efforts, ask me if they plan to anthologise or re-issue something.

I know for a fact Charlie's not against publishing stuff free (You do recall that you can get the entire of Accelerando, including cover art, free from the web thanks to Mr S?).

Copyright is important to writers, it's the thing that lets them get paid for their work and not have entire books snaffled by some smart arsed publisher with a printing press out back. Google, if allowed to copy entire texts without regard to copyright, are setting a dangerous precedent for those who would profit by stealing the work of others (which purdy much amounts to exactly what Google are doing).