A group of 8,000 authors hit Google with a lawsuit trying to stop Google from scanning and indexing their copyrighted materials. They say that the endeavor by Google is a "massive copyright infringement". I agree with the authors. "The authors' works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use," The Author's Guild Inc. said in the lawsuit. Google has come out with a statement that basically says that the authors and publishers can exclude their material if they don't want their material included in the scanning. I have to stop here and ask a stupid question: Didn't the authors and publishers already do that by putting a copyright on the material? Why should the authors and publishers go through the work to opt-out when Google should be the one asking them for permission? Google's the one making the money from the material, not the authors.