Use Their Work Free? Artists Say No to Google - NYTimes.com

When "new media" socialist billionaires decide to not pay people for their work, people are surprised. Google has no ethics when it comes to this stuff. It wants what it wants. And... it gets it most of the time. The concern is not whether the artwork is given freely, it is in the expectation of freely supplied works that is so troubling.

Use Their Work Free? Artists Say No to Google - NYTimes.com: "

“There’s a lot of concern that newspapers and all of print is becoming a bit of an endangered species,” said Brian Stauffer, an illustrator based in Miami whose work has appeared in publications including Rolling Stone, Esquire and Entertainment Weekly, and who also rejected Google’s offer. “When a company like Google comes out very publicly and expects that the market would just give them free artwork, it sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Google, though rebuffed by more than a dozen illustrators, said in its statement that it had plenty of takers."