Imminence of the Eschaton: Google - a fallible god

Talking of Charlie, he makes an important and interesting point about why Google is subtly wrong in their legal fight with the Publishers...

Or, maybe this is a fiendishly clever ploy by Google to get the issue dead legally, since clearly the Publishers have the Money, but not the Right.


So, here's a subtle distinction - in copyright law, currently, there is no essential distinction between electronic publishing or paper publishing. In either case (caveat IANAL) the copyright is retained by author unless explicitly surrendered, transferred or forfeited.

So, if Google has implicit permission to index my web pages, including, for example, my lecture notes. Then why can it not index a paper copy of the same or similar material? If it may do the former, as it has been permitted to do, then it surely may do the latter, except where explicitly forbidden to do so.

Am I missing something.