Google Book-Scanning Project Is Fair Use, 2nd Circ. Says by Bill Donahue.
From the post:
Law360, New York (October 16, 2015, 10:13 AM ET) — The Second Circuit ruled Friday that Google Inc.’s project to digitize and index millions of copyrighted books without permission was legal under the fair use doctrine, handing the tech giant a huge victory in a long-running fight with authors.
Coming more than a decade after the Authors Guild first sued over what would become “Google Books,” the appeals court’s opinion said that making the world’s books text-searchable — while not allowing users to read more than a snippet of text — was a sufficiently “transformative use” of the author’s content to be protected by the doctrine.
“Google’s making of a digital copy to provide a search function is a transformative use, which augments public knowledge by making available information about plaintiffs’ books without providing the public with a substantial substitute for matter protected by the plaintiffs’ copyright interests in the original works or derivatives of them,” the appeals court said.
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Excellent!
Spread the good news!
I will update with a link to the opinion.
Apologies for the delayed update!