Google has apologized to the Chinese Writers Association for scanning the group's works into Google Books without permission.

"China is one of several countries, including the U.S. and France, where Google's digital library program has faced legal challenges," writes Computerworld's Owen Fletcher. "The apology comes after the Chinese group demanded that Google compensate local authors whose works the U.S. search giant scanned without their approval.

"Google is scanning hundreds of thousands of books, often without prior permission from their rights holders, so they can be searched and previewed on the Google Books service," Fletcher writes.

Click here to read the Computerworld story.