In "Les Bibliotheques Francaises sous l'Occupation," Marine Poulain describes how the Nazis stole about 10 million books over four years from both French public and private libraries.

I can't help but think that had Google been around in 1939, this would not have happened. And thanks to them, it will never happen again.

For all that we are debating about the good and bad of digitizing books, or how technology will affect the way we read, manipulate ideas or simply create them, one can only rejoice at the fact that "out-of-print" can be deleted from the dictionary and that robbing a people's cultural patrimony is forever dead.  

You may want to download a copy for free and give it away for free, but as far as I know, that is just not the same as taking someone else's cultural jewels to never give them back. There is "stealing" and then there is "stealing", don't you think?