We lose stories every day because they drift out of use and into the vast limbo of in-copyright, out-of-print books whose ownership is unclear.
"They choose not to filter out copyrighted content, " said the spokesman, Carl D. Folta.
That said, many other mainstream sites, like MySpace and Yahoo, also post videos without trying to screen out copyrighted material.
Google's media partner-rivals are also now asking why Google won't just voluntarily use its technical prowess to ferret out copyrighted material.
One reason, he said, was that Napster faced technological hurdles that make it difficult for it to screen out copyrighted works on a wholesale basis.
It's worth noting that Nescaline didn't include any copyrighted games out of the box, instead providing just a handful of community-made home brew games.
These were "orphan works" -- copyrighted but out of print, whose rights holders can't be found or identified. .
Audible Magic matches sound patterns in videos with those in its registry of copyrighted content, automatically stripping out infringing clips.
Last week, it struck a deal to help the online song-trading service Napster identify and weed out copyrighted songs.
But at the end of the year the copyright runs out, meaning Mein Kampf – or My Struggle – falls into the public domain on 1 January.
The Beatles' Love Me Do was recorded in 1962 and, according to UK law, master recording copyrights run out after 50 years.
