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Quote:AMAZON.COM has come under fire from Britain's publishing and retailing industries even as the debate raged over a perceived threat presented by Google.

The chief executive of HarperCollins UK said she feared the online book seller more than the web search leader, which has created a stir with plans to digitise every book.

"We all want to talk about Google, but personally I see Amazon as a bigger threat because Amazon has shown a lot of signs that they actually want to move into the publishing space," Victoria Barnsley said...

"They are moving into the publishing space and we ought to be very mindful of that,"

Quote:Authors who sign up with digitisation programs run by companies such as Google or Amazon may be unwittingly sacrificing some of their rights, a media lawyer has warned.

"I wouldn't want to see people giving one company hundreds of thousands of books and thinking it doesn't matter, when in fact it does," Adrian Laing [said] ...

Google's Google Print and Amazon's Look Inside programs have caused controversy in the publishing world. While both companies claim that making books searchable and viewable online can increase sales, and offer to digitise such texts for free, publishers and authors have expressed concerns over copyright violations...