Appeals court rules that Google book-scanning is fair use

Google already scanned more than 20 million books, beginning in 2004. And because the public display of “snippets” of books is limited, the court concluded that Google’s digital copies don’t offer a substitute for the copyrighted material in question.

The Authors Guild said it might appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Snippet view was also deemed transformative as it added value to the search function’s new use-it tells researchers whether the book uses the term in a way that would induce her to obtain a copy of the book. However, fair use must not “excessively damage the market for the original by providing the public with a substitute for that original work”.

It rejected the arguments of the Authors Guild, a number of outstanding writers and main publishers that Google’s Google Books program and its Library Project would eat into their earnings potential by permitting readers free entry to the books.

The court notes those earlier arrangements would have allowed users “to read substantial portions of the book”, and “have no bearing on Google’s present programs”. The court said that it constituted fair use. I’ve been known to use Google to search the text of books that I already own, because it’s simply easier to have a computer find it than scanning myself.

Google allows people to search for words or names in books, but only shows snippets of copyrighted works, not entire texts. Google said not so. Google and the plaintiffs came to a preliminary settlement of $125 million dollars, but that was negated by the judge at a lower level court as being unfair to the authors.

The appeals court said Google’s profit motivation does not justify denial of what is a fair use of the books’ content and overall enhances public knowledge. The Guild had asked for “fair compensation for Google’s commercial use of their books and for Google’s distribution of their e-books to libraries”. This has been the focus of a court battle that has dragged on for ten years, but now an appeals court has ruled that Google is doing nothing wrong.