Sceptics often ask of new government programmes: if it is so worthwhile, why is the private sector not doing it already? A similar question can be asked of companies claiming to be acting for the general good: if the public needs it, why is the government not doing it already?

Google’s plan to digitise all of the world’s 168m books needs to be examined in this light. Since 2004, the search-engine corporation has scanned about 5m titles, many of them under copyright. A comprehensive digital library could obviously generate a lot of revenue (although it is not yet fully obvious how). Last year, Google negotiated a long and complicated “settlement” with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which had been suing it. Google would keep just over a third of revenues generated by these online books, with the remainder going to a non-profit book-rights registry run by publishers’ and authors’ representatives. The registry would seek out the authors of “orphaned” books – those under copyright but out of print – and distribute royalties to them. Google agreed to pay $125m to fund the registry.