Dead trees or screen time?

In a bizarre case of my day job spiralling into my blog interest I received a letter today from someone in the printer industry warning that Google’s offer of free downloads of books might well be an admirable attempt to increase literacy but it may well lead to an abuse of corporate facilities. The point is made that printing out a book at work will cost the employer money.

It is an interesting argument but surely employers already concerned about the amount of time staff spend surfing the web might view it as a cost worth paying if people print it off and then take it home with them and don’t spend hours reading it off the screen.