– ‘Win for fair use’ –
Krista Cox of the Association of Research Libraries hailed the ruling, tweeting, “Win for #fairuse.”
Nancy Sims, a University of Minnesota copyright librarian, said in a blog post, “This is a pretty great outcome for libraries and the public.”
Google said in a statement, “We are grateful that the court has agreed to uphold the decision of the Second Circuit (appeals court) which concluded that Google Books is transformative and consistent with copyright law.”
The statement added: “The product acts like a card catalogue for the digital age by giving people a new way to find and buy books while at the same time advancing the interests of authors.”
The Authors Guild said it was disappointed.
“Blinded by the public benefit arguments, the Second Circuit ruling tells us that Google, not authors, deserves to profit from the digitization of their books,” said Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the authors group.
The ruling, she said, “misunderstood the importance of emerging online markets for books and book excerpts. It failed to comprehend the very real potential harm to authors resulting from its decision. The price of this short-term public benefit may well be the future vitality of American culture.”
In the October appellate ruling, Judge Pierre Leval wrote that the longstanding interpretation of copyright law has for 300 years been that authors do not have “absolute control” over their works, and that there are important exemptions for “fair use,” including news reporting, historical analysis, parody and other “transformative” purposes.
The court said that the snippets made available by Google were not a viable substitute for the works and that it was immaterial if Google made a profit from its search business using the books.
In the original ruling, New York judge Chin said what was originally called the “Library Project” preserves books, gives “new life” to forgotten editions, sustains “print-disabled” users and benefits authors and publishers by finding them new readers.
The case, which dates back to 2005, centres on a Google program started in 2004 to create an electronic database of books that could be searchable by keywords.
