Arstechnica article: Court rules book scanning is fair use, suggesting Google Books victory

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

This news us a few days old but I have not seen it mentioned on the AD list.

Court rules book scanning is fair use, suggesting Google Books victory
Judge rules for Google's library partners in lawsuit brought by Authors Guild.
by Timothy B. Lee - Oct 11, 2012

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-rules-book-scanning-is-fair-use-suggesting-google-books-victory/
http://bit.ly/Qki6FD

[Begin excerpt]
The Author's Guild has suffered another major setback in its fight to
stop Google's ambitious book-scanning project. The Guild lost a key
ally when Google settled with a coalition of major publishers last
week. Now a judge has ruled that the libraries who have provided
Google with their books to scan are protected by copyright's fair use
doctrine. While the decision doesn't guarantee that Google will
win—that's still to be decided in a separate lawsuit—the reasoning of
this week's decision bodes well for Google's case.
[End excerpt]


Why Google is right and the Authors Guild is wrong on book scanning
By Mathew Ingram
Oct 11, 2012 - 10:53AM PT

http://gigaom.com/2012/10/11/why-google-is-right-and-the-authors-guild-is-wrong-on-book-scanning/
http://bit.ly/RzrwkZ

[Begin excerpt]
A federal court has found that scanning books for search — which
Google was doing for a university project called the Hathi Trust — is
clearly covered by the “fair use” principle in copyright law, which
could help Google in its own lawsuit with the Authors Guild.

The seven-year fight between authors and publishers over Google’s
attempt to scan and digitize millions of books as part of its Google
Library Project is almost certainly one of the longest-running
copyright battles of the web era. The company recently agreed to
settle a lawsuit launched by the Association of American Publishers,
but a similar lawsuit with the Authors Guild is still under way — and
now Google has just been given what looks like some powerful
ammunition from a federal court in a related case, involving a group
of universities known as the Hathi Trust, who were helping the search
giant with its scanning program for research purposes.
[End excerpt]

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