Last Thursday, a decision was reached in the case of Authors Guild Inc.
et al. v. Google, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of New York, dismissing claims of Authors Guild that Google
violates copyright law by providing "snippets" of copyrighted works
online via its Google Books project. See an article
on the decision from Reuters news. Authors Guild, an advocacy group
supporting the rights of authors and publishers, is expected to appeal
the decision. In a 30-page opinion, Judge Denny Chin found that Google
met all the necessary elements for a fair-use defense under copyright
law. For a summary of the fair-use analysis, see this article from Wired.com. Wired also has available a PDF copy of the opinion.
The
opinion highlights the educational and transformative nature of the
full-text availability of the works, including the ability for
researchers to conduct analyses of the text data, including word
frequencies, etc. The case also has far-reaching implications for the
library community. Our own text analysis of the opinion reveals that
the word "libraries" was mentioned 26 times and the word "librarians" 5
times. According to the Reuters article, Google has described the
Google Books project as a "card catalog for the digital age."
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