A publishing executive, incensed by Google's grand scheme to digitize all the world's books, decided to make a point at last week's publishing expo in New York. Seeing a couple of laptops unattended at the Google Book Search kiosk, Richard Charkin of Macmillan, decided to swipe the machines. Google, which wants to include text from books in its all-encompassing search engine, believes information should be free. The point of the publisher's stunt: why not all other property? Writes Cherkin: "I felt rather shabby playing this trick on Google. They should feel the same playing the same trick on authors and publishers." [Richard Charkin via Engadget].

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