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Google Wins Digital Books Class Action Battle with Writers
By Dominic Rivera
A federal judge ruled today that Google’s project of digitally copying millions of books for online search does not violate copyright law. This ruling ends an eight-year old class action lawsuit against the search giant and paves the way toward building the world’s largest digital library.
“Google Books provides significant public benefits. 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,” Judge Denny Chin said in his Nov. 14 ruling.
The decision comes more than two years after the judge rejected a proposed $125 million class action settlement in the case involving The Authors Guild, representing the writers, and Google.
The Authors Guild brought Google to court in 2005 for copyright infringement by scanning and indexing books without the permission of writers. In his ruling, Judge Chin said Google’s Book project would not supersede or supplant books because it’s not meant to be used for reading them.
“Google’s use of copyrighted works is highly transformative,” the judge wrote. “Google Books digitizes and transforms expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars, researchers and others find books. Words in books are being used in a way they have not been used before.”
The Authors Guild is expected to appeal, while Google released a statement expressing that they are delighted with the ruling.
“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,” Google’s statement said.
The Google Books Class Action Lawsuit is Authors Guild v. Google, Case No. 1:05-cv-08136, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
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