Judge Denny Chin in Southern District of New York has ruled that Google Books provides a
public benefit and is a
fair use of copyrighted material. He ruled that the Google Books project doesn’t violate copyright law and dismissed the eight-year-old lawsuit against Google.
Chin wrote. “It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.” To date the massive book-digitization project has scanned more than 20 million books.
The Authors Guild, which represents writers sued in 2005 alleging that Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, infringed copyrights by scanning and indexing books without writers’ permission. After the decision Paul Aiken, the Authors Guild’s executive director, said that the ruling is a “fundamental challenge” to copyrights and that his group plans to appeal.
A Google spokesperson said, “This has been a long road and we are absolutely delighted with today’s judgement. As we have long said, Google Books is in compliance with copyright law and acts like a card catalog for the digital age, giving users the ability to find books to buy or borrow.”
In this 33-page ruling Chin detailed the following ways that Google Books provides public benefit.
1. “It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration of the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.”
2. “It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books.”
3. “It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books.”
4. “It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old print books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life.”
5. “It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations.”
6. “It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers.”
Chin’s ruling came a little more than two and a half years after he rejected a proposed $125 million settlement reached by the two parties. At the time, he ruled that the deal wasn’t fair, adequate, or reasonable. He denied a motion by Google to dismiss the case in May 2012 and granted a plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, later rejected by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
For a detailed analysis of the ruling read Nancy Wolff’s report on the
PACA blog.