Google wins legal fight over plan to scan world’s books
November 15, 2013 Leave a comment
November 14, 2013 8:18 pm
Google wins legal fight over plan to scan world’s books
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Google has won a long-running lawsuit over its ambitious plan to scan and index all the world’s books, removing a question over its right to display small extracts of text in response to search queries. Judge Denny Chin, the New York federal court judge who has presided over the case since it was launched eight years ago, ruled that Google’s display of snippets from books was protected under “fair use” provisions that allow limited use of copyrighted material. The decision clears one of the remaining legal questions surrounding a project, launched in 2004, that came to symbolise Google’s approach to opening internet access to more information.The brainchild of co-founder Larry Page – who also designed a high-speed scanner for the task – the project has so far led to the digitisation of more than 20m books held in library vaults. The plan became a focal point for media industry complaints that Google was profiting unfairly from copyrighted material.
The case was brought by the US Authors Guild on behalf of its members but was temporarily suspended in 2008 after Google reached a tentative settlement with authors and a group of large publishers to resolve a number of claims. However, Judge Chin rejected the settlement in 2011 after complaints that it contravened the rights of publishers and authors outside the US and a warning from the Department of Justice that it might be anti-competitive.
Lawyers for the guild had argued that if internet users could search for extracts of books, they were less likely to buy the complete works. The judge sided instead with Google’s argument that readers were highly unlikely to be able to assemble enough snippets through internet searches to make a book purchase unnecessary.
The judge ruled on Thursday that “all society benefits” from the book scanning – from the librarians and researchers who have come to rely on it as an essential tool, to readers.
“In this day and age of online shopping, there can be no doubt but that Google Books improves book sales,” the judge said.
“The judge understood that this whole project is tremendously beneficial to the public,” said Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which along with the American Libraries Association filed a brief with the court in support of Google.
Google last year settled a separate case over its book scanning brought by a group of publishers including Pearson, owner of the Financial Times. It still faces a complaint from a trade group representing photographers.
About bambooinnovator
Bamboo Innovator 