Attempting to force Google to change course on this would at best result in an empty gesture on Google's part with likely no follow up regarding the bigger proj

Attempting to force Google to change course on this would at best result in an empty gesture on Google's part with likely no follow up regarding the bigger project. They may open up what is already scanned, but they're not likely to resume the project under benevolent terms. Employment used to last as lifetime. One could retire from Sears with decent benefits if they were loyal. Today, many of us are contract employees or Uber style "partners". This is the same phenomenon we see happening here, just on the product side. We've been going down this road for a while now. You often don't buy products that last a lifetime anymore. It's often necessary to buy a whole new one rather than fix the one you already have because the replacement parts aren't made available. So, it's happened to our workforce and our products, now it is also happening to our companies. Always in the name of profit. Fair weather friends. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it is bad. Almost always it is a false choice. The logic of capitalism insists on competition and specialization which are often at odds with cooperation and leisure. Why should Google need to choose between the bottom line and benefiting its community by sharing the work they've already accomplished. In a word, competition. To me, this is the greatest strength of open-source. It allows for cooperation and facilitates transparency, the very foundations of community. Open-source has done nothing to stymie specialization, one of the main thrusts of "The Wealth of Nations". The other, self interest serving the whole, I think, has been shown by history and OSS to be one possible, but not the sole, idea regarding what motivations might facilitate a productive community. So, back to Google Books. What happened to Google Books is exactly what one should expect to have happened in a political-economy such as ours. A different outcome would not necessarily have resulted from different decisions by Google, but by different incentives and structures of a different economic framework. Let's not be distracted by the red herring of this anecdote, framing it as a one off, but instead look to this anecdote as a case study in a much larger domain.