Authors Guild sues: Google Print a massive
copyright infringement?
The Authors Guild, which represents 8,000 authors
in the United States, has filed a class-action copyright infringement
lawsuit [PDF] against Google in the Southern District of New York because of
its Google Print program that makes books and other offline information
searchable online. Google has contracted with several public and university
libraries to create digital archives of the libraries' collections of books. The
suit alleges that by reproducing a copy of these works that are not in the
public domain, Google is engaging in massive copyright infringement. “This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright
law,” said Authors Guild President Nick Taylor. “It’s not up to Google or anyone
other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide
whether and how their works will be copied.”
In a
first reaction, Google regrets "that this group chose to sue us over a
program that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world --
especially since any copyright holder can
exclude their books from the program." Google also did point out, that its
programm "doesn’t show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books
through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show
more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term
appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online
booksellers and libraries."
September 21, 2005: Orlowski, Andrew,
Authors sue Google, The Register:
"The Authors Guild, along with a former US poet laureate, is suing Google
for copyright infringement."
September 20, 2005: Mills, Elinor,
Authors Guild sues Google over library project, CNet:
"The Authors Guild on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against search engine Google,
alleging that its scanning and digitizing of library books constitutes a
"massive" copyright infringement."
