by Matt Lee
Quick Summary
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled unanimously in favor of Google over the Authors Guild’s complaints about Google Books and the digitization of in-copyright materials.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled unanimously in favor of Google over the Authors Guild’s complaints about Google Books and the digitization of in-copyright materials. For background, see the Library Journal article “U.S. Appeals Court Rules Google Book Scanning is Fair Use.”
One of the key points discussed in the judges’ ruling points to the true intention of copyright laws. The main beneficiary of copyright law is the public, according to Judge Pierre Leval. Monetary benefit to authors is a consideration, but is not the ultimate one.
When Google digitizes in-copyright material and makes snippets of that material available for free to the public, they are not only transforming that work (another key point discussed in the ruling), they are also providing great benefit to the public in terms of increased current and potential future access to information, according to the ruling.
For Google, this means that the Google Books project can continue (to whatever extent it remains a focus). For libraries, especially research libraries, this ruling seems to clear the way for potential projects. Certainly few libraries can match Google’s scale, but we might digitize certain corners of our collections, transforming them into indexes, text-mining sources, or other data-rich repositories. Have you heard (or conjured) any interesting ideas on what this ruling might mean for libraries?
