A digital age test of copyright law

Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google Inc.'s ambitious programme to scan millions of books and make their text fully searchable on the Internet.

On the one hand, Sanfilippo credits the programme for boosting sales of obscure titles at Penn State University Press, where he works. On the other, he's worried that Google's plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry's long-term revenues.

With Google's book-scanning programme set to resume in earnest this fall, copyright laws that long preceded the Internet look to be headed for a digital-age test.

The outcome could determine how easy it will be for people with Internet access to benefit from knowledge that's now mostly locked up - in books sitting on dusty library shelves, many of them out of print.

"More and more people are expecting access, and they are making do with what they can get easy access to," said Brewster Kahle, co-founder of the Internet Archive, which runs smaller book-scanning projects, mostly for out-of-copyright works.

"Let's make it so that they find great works rather than whatever just happens to be on the Net."

To prevent the wholesale file-sharing that is plaguing the entertainment industry, Google has set some limits in its library project: Users won't be able to easily print materials or read more than small portions of copyright works online.

Google also says it will send readers hungry for more directly to booksellers and libraries.