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               Google Wins Big In Scanning Book Lawsuit

 

 

Kelsey Flail

November 21, 2013

 

After a decade-long battle over Google’s ability to scan over 20 million books, the world's largest search engine comes out victorious. I dont know about you, but I was not suprised at all by the verdict. We live in a digital world now and books should be available to everyone on this platform. The lawsuit began in 2005 when numerous authors and publishers from the Authors Guild claimed that Google scanned over 20 Million pieces of literature without permission of the right holders. 

 

Google felt that they were doing the authors and publishers a favor by allowing people to see only short snippets of the books based on searched text. In turn, if google users liked the content found in the snippet provided by google books, they could end up buying the entire book elsewhere at retail price . According to Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com,  “Google Books allows us to search books in the same way we can search across the entire web, and who wouldn’t think that that’s a benefit for everyone?”I think that google is really just trying to provide people with brief yet meaningful content that can help users get a sense of the authors ideas without giving the whole story away for free. Publishers and authors are just in denial that we live that paperpack books are becoming a thing of the past. It's important that as a society we are able to access resources and reading material online, in a transformative use of U.S.

Copyright Laws.

 

After eight years of intense battle in the courtroom, on November 14, 2013, New York City’s U.S. Circuit Judge, Denny Chin felt that “Google Books” did not violate copyright laws.  “Google Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books, Chin stated. Instead, it adds value to the original.” Last Thursday’s ruling left many people stunned, especially the authors and publishers who sincerely believe that Google has made a generous profit from scanning and releasing these copyright materials.  Executive Director of the Authors Guild, Paul Aiken was outraged after the verdict was issued, stating, “ Such mass digitization and exploitation far exceeds the bounds of the fair use defense.”

 

Although the issue seems to be over for now, many believe this is just round one and an appeal from the Authors Guild will very likely occur in the near future. 

 

Stay tuned!

 

 

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