WHEN I WRITE about Google I have to declare an interest. I am the chairman of a small academic publisher; Pickering & Chatto was founded in 1820 and refounded in 1983. We publish scholarly texts and depend on our copyright for the sales of our books. Google threatens that copyright, along with the whole copyright structure of authors, editors and publishers of printed books and, indeed, e-books.

However, copyright is not the only problem raised by the success of Google’s wonderful search engine. Along with copyright, and the revenue based on it, there are the issues of political and social censorship. Google has been forced by the Chinese Government to agree to political censorship. There will be only minimal reports of Falun Gong, Tiananmen Square or Tibet on Google’s China service. The majority of Google’s Chinese customers will not be told what the rest of the world knows on the subjects.

Here again, I must declare an interest. I have been a quasi-censor. I accept that there should be some social censorship of the internet. In 1989, before the internet became important, I agreed to be the first Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council. We were not formally censors — we had no powers — but we did study and discuss what would be appropriate to show on television, including the limits for sex, violence and bad language, and the need for the protection of children.

On most public issues I come down on the libertarian side, but I accept the need for some social protections. Indeed, I think it important that editing in the public interest should be done by reasonably liberal-minded people. They must accept criticism and suspicion of their work. Censors are always unpopular and sometimes ridiculous, but they may be necessary.

Google, and other global operators on the internet, does in fact accept the principle of social censorship, however little they like it. There is an obvious example in paedophile pornography, which is almost universally banned, at least in theory. There are also types of adult pornography, such as “snuff” films, in which real murders are, or purport to be, shown; nobody defends them. I do not know how its security systems work, but I do not think that snuff films would get through Google’s safeguards. They would not certainly not be compatible with its famous motto, “Don’t be evil”.

The real difficulty comes in the area between social and political censorship. Most of us are agreed that child pornography should be banned, both because it necessarily invokes the abuse of children and because it may feed an addiction to paedophile conduct. Most of us are agreed that there should be no censorship of political information or political criticism.

Google may have felt there was no commercial alternative to agreeing to the Chinese request. That was the only way it could remain in the Chinese market. Nevertheless Google itself regrets the compromise it believes that it had to make.

This censorship is also damaging to China’s reputation. No regime that cannot afford to have its policies examined can be really secure. Nothing could be more absurd than to see the great world power of China shrinking back from the spectacle of Falun Gong like a timorous old lady shrinking back at the sight of a mouse. It devalues China. In any case, the Chinese are clever people, operating with world networks, and with millions of computers. Attempts at this sort of censorship are bound to fail.

Midway between social and political censorship, there arises the issue of terrorism. I am sure that terrorists could use Google as an element in their training schemes. Indeed, many of them must already have done so. Yet, in principle, governments have every reason, and surely every right, to try to make the terrorists’ task more difficult. Presumably the CIA has inserted its probes, human and electronic, into Google. Where terrorism is relying on Google information, the CIA is justified in doing so. Terrorism attacks liberty in two ways, by its frontal assault and by the legitimate reaction of governments. Google cannot be immune to this process.

Copyright is the other great issue. It is an issue that extends well beyond Google and well beyond publishing. Copyright is the basis for the remuneration of invention; indeed, the only other substantial basis for financing invention, in all areas, is government expenditure, and that is much less effective. If there were no copyright, there would be no money to finance newspapers (a quickly muted hoorah from the Liberal Democrats), books, films, recorded music, new drugs or the development of the internet itself. Copyright is the mother of invention. No copyright — no revenue — no innovation.

Yet there is a conflict of interest between search engines and the right to intellectual property. Google plans to put whole libraries on to its system, and offer free copying rights to its users. Searches would throw up key passages in all the books in a library. Google requires owners of copyright who do not want their books to be copied and extracted to inform the company that they do not agree to this copying. But that is the opposite of the normal procedure in which the copier has to approach the copyright holder. The danger — put simply — is that people will not buy books; they will wait to download them free from Google.

There is indeed a strong tradition among internet users that as much as possible on the internet should be free, and that nothing should be censored. As ideals, these may seem reasonable enough. The issue in the case of literary copyright turns on this question: is the free communication of free information more valuable to society than the financing of future publications? Would we benefit by having free J. K. Rowling in the present at the cost of having no J. K. Rowling in the future?

No copyright, no publishing revenue. No revenue, no new books. If Google is to have a second stage of life, it will have to accept the reality of intellectual property. After all, Google has accepted the reality of China.

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