A while ago I came up with a way that Google could get on the right side of the copyright issue. See How google can be the good guy for publishers.

At the time I had regular calls with some Google Adwords reps, and when I shared my idea they told me “Google doesn’t want to be the web’s policeman.”

It was obvious that my suggestion was butting up against some internal Google mantra.

But the real world has a way of messing with mantras. Now Google has become the copyright cop on Youtube. See Google to sentence YouTube violators to ‘copyright school’

Google’s goal is to organize all the world’s information. You can’t do that without taking copyright into account.

Google is successful because of other people’s content. They have a moral obligation to use that content properly, and in the context of their operations, that does mean becoming the web’s policeman, at least to some extent, and at least as far as copyright violation is concerned.