Courts: Google’s Book-Scanning Project Is Fair Use

I have a feeling this case is going to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A federal appeals court has sided with Google in a lawsuit filed by the nation’s largest trade group for professional writers, ruling that the Internet giant’s large-scale book-scanning project is a legal fair use of these texts and not a violation of the authors’ copyright.

Hmmm... If it's in the public domain it's fair game, but I could see an author having an issue with big chunks of a book being put out there for free. Amazon does something similar to this though I think... I know for a fact I've been able to browse a lot more pages in a book than I thought were appropriate. That being said there are some libraries now where you can "check out" digital copies of books, so...

Interesting to see the results of this one.

Maybe Google could put together a Netflix for out of print books and cut those authors in? Just a thought lol.

I agree wit the judge who dismissed the case in 2013 and the appeals court

I'll excerpt the good bit below

In dismissing the case, that judge declared that Google Books passes the 4-point sniff test for fair use.
First, the program is transformative and non-commercial. It “digitizes books and transforms
expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars, researchers, and others find books.” It also “does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books.”
Second, the scanned texts have all been previously published and made available to the public. Unpublished works present a higher bar for fair use considerations.
The third factor in the fair use test involves how much of the original text is made available. While the judge acknowledged that Google puts limits on what can be seen, this factor “weighs slightly against a finding of fair use.”
Finally, there’s the consideration of what sort of impact Google Books might have on the market value for the scanned texts.

Sounds like all the can apply to torrents too :S

probably take a day for someone to figure out how to make a few hundred seemingly different requests and stitch the whole thing together and about another day to automate that and start sucking down all the works.

Anyway this is will just be another way that Google will extort people, in this case authors/publishers, for search result placement. Seems harmless but people buying the books end up paying for advertising

flashoverride said:

Hmmm... If it's in the public domain it's fair game,

Click to expand...

They said 'many' works are public domain. Many doesn't mean all or even most, just means more than one. You can get many public domain works free from Amazon and other ebooks.

I am glad the knowledge is digitized,but sad that one corporation controls the digits.

npublici said:

I am glad the knowledge is digitized,but sad that one corporation controls the digits.

Click to expand...

One corporation could afford the litigation, but perhaps if this takes hold then under such a judgement many other smaller outfits could do similar things hopefully. Great news imho.

jpm100 said:

probably take a day for someone to figure out how to make a few hundred seemingly different requests and stitch the whole thing together and about another day to automate that and start sucking down all the works.

Click to expand...

People can already find pirated ebooks using the normal Google search. Finding particular phrases or passages in those books, not as easy.

There is one thing that they should definitely do; make previous versions copyrights expired. You write a new textbook, then your last one on the same subject becomes public domain. Enough already of professors moving a chapter around and declaring it a 'new textbook' every god damn year and costing the kids thousands of dollars so he can pocket the profits on his 'new book'. I remember some textbooks costing me a week's pay. Same with any fiction. You change the book, the old version becomes public domain. You get one go round to get rich on a book/movie/tv show/song. 100 years is absolutely ridiculous.