Google will temporarily cease scanning copyrighted books from libraries at Harvard, the University of Michigan and Stanford University until November, allowing copyright holders to opt out by directly contacting Google, the Washington Post reports. Meanwhile, the New York Public Library and Oxford University have agreed to provide Google access to materials that are no longer protected by copyright.

"What we're doing here is completely in line with the principles of fair use," a Google spokesperson is quoted as saying. "We think this will help more users discover their [publishers'] books, and buy their books."

But publishers, which have been raising copyright concerns since Google launched the effort, say Google has pushed the copyright envelope by scanning in books in their entirety and placing the burden on authors and publishers to opt out of the scanning project.

"Google's procedure shifts the responsibility for preventing infringement to the copyright owner rather than the user, turning every principle of copyright law on its ear," Patricia Schroeder, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, is quoted by Internet News as saying.

Publishers can give Google a list of books they want added; on the other hand, publishers and copyright holders can also provide a list of books they don't want scanned.

Google introduced its test service, Google Print, in October and subsequently launched the Google Print Library Project, an attempt to scan books in some of the world's greatest libraries to make them searchable.

"The goal of Google Print is ambitious: to make the full text of all the world's books searchable by anyone," said the Google spokesman.