They are the ultimate ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Copyright has been a thing for a long long time before googs developed their scanning. They were well aware that it should have been an opt-in, but knew they’d never gain traction for their little project. So they bull in a China shop’d their way to a point of too far to stop them.
>>dylan6+(OP)
Copyright is to do with protecting reproduction of works, no? What google has done here is scanning the book and indexed the content, presumably so it makes it easier for users to search books for relevant material. Assuming they don't reproduce large sections of copyrighted works in their search results I don't feel like they're doing anything wrong here.
>>remus+wH
> Assuming they don't reproduce large sections of copyrighted works
They do (or did). They showed the text around the search term, around a page or so, which made it possible to reconstruct the whole book without that much effort.
>>dylan6+(OP)
Yet the keep getting sued and keep winning in the courts, at least in the U.S. Seems like they have a pretty good grasp of how the laws work.