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The initiative has seen its up and downs over the years. As luck would have it, these socalled orphan works represent a significant portion of the world collected knowledge. Google hasn said how many it thinks there are, but one academic believes it might total 70 percent some 90 million works. The remaining 40 million or so may be plenty for your friendly, neighborhood library, but not for the Google of them all. Judge Denny Chin raised a number of concerns. But even a system which requires an owner to opt out might rankle: If you didn want to sell your car, should you have to lift a finger to prevent someone from giving you some money and driving it away? Shouldn an owner always have total control? Still, if the public good is overarching, the rights of individuals can be deemed secondary. In Kelo v City of New London the Supreme Court ruled, in essence, that a town could kick people out of their homes to increase tax revenues. Google is a private company, of course, and stands with the Books project to make money from things other people own even as it provides the world with an everywhere, always open library of everything.
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