It used to be "what's good for GM is good for America" but now it seems "what's good for Google is good for the world":

Google has a grand plan of "organizing the world's information and making it more universally accessible and useful". It hopes to pump $200m (£110m) into creating a digital archive of millions of books from four top US libraries - the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, and of the New York Public Library - by 2015. It is also digitising out-of-copyright books from the UK's Oxford University. However it has temporarily stopped scanning copyrighted texts until November to allay concerns about the plan, after several groups complained about copyright violation...Google has said copyright holders who contact the company and ask for their books to be withheld from the project, will be respected. Only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more Google statement. But critics say that moves the onus from Google to the writers.

I suppose bolstered by the seduction of technology, the mindless pro-tech anti-law lobby and money, money, money Google is now able to proceed without concern for the actual ownership of things and take as it likes. It is quite astounding that just because the tools used in this pilfering make pleasant clicking noises no one is calling in the cops.

What is the next class of ownership / identification interest that will be ignored in this way by the new gaping maw of e-industry, the new e-Mammon? What will Google do once it gets it hands on DNA and nanotechnology? Time to re-read "Why the future does not need us" and ponder where the grey goo will be coming from.