Singel-Minded: To the Whingers Go the Spoils in the Google Books Decision | Epicenter | Wired.com

"Who won then? The copyright whingers. Take the bloke who complained, “I do not want my books to be digitized.” (Yes, he got quoted in the decision.) Never mind that the settlement would allow the fellow to opt out of having his books digitized, if he so liked — despite the fact that it’s very clearly fair use in the United States for Google to digitize any copyrighted book and use snippets of it in search results. Here’s another passage from the decision: “A 79-year old nature writer and author of 23 books illustrated with photographs of animals in the wild worries that the loss of control over her works could result in their being used to “vilif[y] the wildlife I spent my life trying to help the public come to understand and protect.” Yes, the paranoid and the curmudgeonly get the veto over the library of the future because, well, it might actually get them readers...."