Since 2005 Google has been in a long drawn out court battle with the Authors Guild. For those not in the know, the Authors Guild is a non-profit organisation for Authors based in the United States.
The conflict between the two groups started after Google’s initial launch of Google Books in 2005. Google Books is a service that allows the user to digitally search the text of a vast selection of books. Google Books does not make the entire book available for the user to read, only short passages. Its main purpose is to provide a way for the user an easy way find books which discuss their area of interest. If the user wants to read beyond the short passage, they must purchase the book.
Regardless of this restriction, the books have been scanned digitally without the permissions of the authors and thus technically violates their right to restrict all others from duplicating their work. Thus, the dispute began and eventually made its way into the courtroom.
Earlier this week circuit judge Denny Chin in the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of Google by holding that their actions fell under their banner of fair use. I found the following passage from Chin’s judgment to be especially significant:
“In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences,while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers,librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books.”
It will be interesting to see how this judgment will affect other areas of intellectual property law in the US (and around the world). Actually, if we think about it, this ruling is very much in line with what goes on in the music industry already. For close to a decade now the industry has allowed users to search for songs with the results of the search having short samples of songs within them. This can be seen in primarily in online music stores such as iTunes.
Sources:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/15/google_wins_decision_in_books_archive_case/
