[gruez]

1. How does this interact with the ruling that both google books (ie. large scale scanning of books without author's consent) and google snippets (the same, but for websites) have been ruled legal by the courts?

2. Google might not be the most sympathetic defendant, but what about libraries? They offer books to be borrowed, and some offer photocopiers. If you put the two together, you get a copyright infringement operation, all enabled by the library. Should libraries be on the hook too?

[butlike]

For #2 yes...you would be engaging in copyright infringement. The library, being on the hook, would probably ask you to stop if they noticed you copying full books. If not the first time, certainly on the second