That's a real shame. Brin and Page want to bring knowledge to the world and greed gets in the way. AmCy
Google faces many legal challenges over copyrights, they will have to negotiate with copyright owners down the road. What if they just took music and recorded it all then let folks listen to sound bites without paying the artist royalties? It is the same situation with the published word. The bit torrent guys are in trouble also right now. Google makes money off of the content just as webmasters do when folks put up content on forums like this one. One day webmasters will find themselves facing lawsuits also by putting up content they have no rights to. The problem is paying lawyers to chase down every violation, the reason Google is targeted is that they are a large company with money, small webmasters have little chance of suit being brought against them as they would just disappear
In a way that's true but also keep in mind that Google is also a for-profit company. If there's no profit or benefit to them in some way or another, they wouldn't be doing it.
Google prolly has tons of lawsuits that they dont even disclose but I am sure they knew they were going to get suied and are planning on settling it .. or paying them off
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I believe that the works of Shakespeare are copyright free (as they were written before such laws existed), so anyone is free to publish them.