From MediaPost:

MSN HAS BECOME THE LATEST large Internet player to attempt to make the contents of books searchable online. The company this week announced that it had joined the Open Content Alliance in preparation for the launch of its own book search next year.

Rival company Yahoo! earlier this month said it had embarked on a similar initiative. Both are following in the footsteps of Google, which started scanning in books from libraries and universities last year.

The Google initiative proved controversial with publishers, who claim that scanning and posting portions of books potentially violates copyright law. Google allows copyright holders to opt-out of the index, which prevents the books from being searchable--and this summer, Google suspended a portion of its book scanning program until November. Still, Google currently faces copyright infringement lawsuits by the Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

MSN is hoping to avoid similar problems by only targeting works in the public domain or uncopyrighted material. The company said in a statement that it would respect all copyrights and work with rights holders to agree upon protections for copyrights.