Four years since its launch, Google Art Project has digitized some 45,000 artworks from museums around the world. It's a drop in the bucket. The copyright system is keeping many works out of the online realm even in an age when major museums like the Met and Smithsonian are digitizing their entire collections for public usage.

Frustrating site visitors most might be the obvious omissions with Google Street Views of museum galleries. Many blurred boxes and mysterious fog banks reside where art should be. Google contractually can not make money off the project.

The push for all-access to art will, hopefully, not go the way of Google Books. That project scanned 20 million books for a digital library only to be shelved after a group of publishers sued.