The U.S. Supreme Court has recently thrown out a request from the Author’s Guild against Google, who over a decade ago began a project of an online library. Google Books can be considered a book searching tool with bibliographical information, a way to download royalty-free books, and even an online bookstore. However, American authors esteemed that Google’s online library infringed upon author’s rights. After the Court’s decision, Google’s project of scanning books can carry on as intended.
What is Google Books?
Started in 2004, Google Books is a digitization project, in collaboration with several major libraries. Since then, about 20 million books have been digitized.
The aim is to create a database of as many books as possible, in many languages. Users can find books still under copyright, and others are in the public domain. It shows extracts of books, and links to bookshop or libraries to get them. If the book is in the public domain, users can see a full view and download it. For some books, users can see a few pages, if the author has given permission. Without permission, users can still see just a few lines. For books without a preview, it means they have not been scanned.
A Supreme Court decision
On April 18, 2016, the Supreme Court ended eleven years of legal proceedings. This legal battle between American authors and Google began just after the idea of Google Books was created, in 2005. The most important author’s union, the Author’s Guild, took Google to court for violation of the copyright law. According to them, Google Books can have repercussions on books sales.
In October 2015, the second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York turned down the Guild’s plea in favor of Google. According to the Court, the project is a fair use of copyright law, because it shows only excerpts of books, with links to the bookshops and libraries to find the books. By rejecting the appeal, the Supreme Court approved of the New York court’s judgment. It was the last opportunity for the authors to contest the decision.
In a statement, the Author’s Guild noted that it is afraid that this decision could weaken authors’ protection of their works, and be a gateway to copyright infringement. On the other side, Google says it is happy with this decision, and can continue to offer to users a way to find, search and get books they may not be able to access in another way.
Sources
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-google-book-search-20160419-story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/technology/google-books-case.html?_r=1
Photo credit: geralt via Pixabay, CC0 Public Domain License
