A DECADE ago, Google announced plans to scan and make searchable the world’s books, and it has been fighting lawsuits from authors and publishers ever since.
After a seven-year legal battle, in 2012 the major US publishers reached a settlement with Google that allows them to keep copyrighted books from being displayed. On October 16, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court ruling in favour of Google and against the Authors Guild, meaning writers cannot stop the search giant from adding their work to its online library of more than 20-million books.
The saga has had enough twists and turns to fill a — well, you know.
"Google’s unauthorised digitising of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality and display of snippets from those works are noninfringing fair uses," Judge Pierre Leval wrote in the appellate decision.
Even though the company stands to profit from the project, its digital library is different enough and its excerpts limited enough in comparison with the original books that it does not need to license the material, Leval says.
