The lawsuit is being led by the Authors Guild, the largest
society of published writers in the United States, which represents
more than 8,000 authors. It accepts that Google has the agreement
of some libraries but complains that the authors of the books in
those libraries were not consulted.
“This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law,” said
Authors Guild president Nick Taylor on Tuesday. “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.”
Google Print targeted publishers, encouraging them to make the
content of their books searchable online. It launched in October
2004 and was extended in December by the Google Print Library
Project, a scheme to upload the content of books from the shelves
of major US libraries.
A user searching Google Print sees links on the results pages
when there are books relevant to his query. Clicking on a title
will deliver a page from which the user can either browse the full
text of the work – if copyright has expired – or brief excerpts
and/or bibliographic data where the work is still protected by
copyright. Links to sellers are also provided.
According to Google, the programme will increase the viability
of in and out of print books and generate book sales. Users will be
able to search across library collections, including out of print
books and titles that weren't previously available anywhere but on
a library shelf.
The libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan,
and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library
signed up to the programme. But some publishers have expressed
reservations, concerned about how Google would protect the rights
of authors and publishers whose books it had scanned.
Under pressure, Google announced in May that it was temporarily
halting the scanning of in-copyright works, so that copyright
holders could let the firm know if their works should not be
scanned.
The Authors Guild has been joined in its lawsuit by former New
York Times writer Herbert Mitgang, children’s author Betty Miles
and former US Poet Laureate Daniel Hoffman. They filed a class
action in a New York federal court, seeking damages and in
injunction.
However, in a Google Blog posting, Google’s Vice President for
Product Management, Susan Wojcicki, denied any infringement.
“Google 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,” she said, explaining that this was consistent with
the US fair use doctrine that allows a restricted use of
copyrighted works.
“We regret that this group chose to sue us over a program that
will make millions of books more discoverable to the world,” she
added.
When pages from books are displayed in Google Print, the user's
copy, save and print functions are disabled.
