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ANYBODY WHO has ever had a book published will have felt a thrill of horror at Google’s book digitisation programme. It aims to do nothing less than make available online all the books in the world, including those still covered by copyright.

Last year, the search giant reached an agreement in the US with publishers and authors to settle a number of lawsuits that charged the company with copyright infringement for the unauthorised scanning of books, and agreed to pay $125 million to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers could register works and receive compensation.