“Snippet view at best and after a large commitment of manpower, produces discontinuous, tiny fragments, amounting in the aggregate to no more than 16 percent of a book”, said the appeals court ruling.
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Google was taken to court by a group of authors who claimed that its book scanning project was illegal and deprived them of revenue.
Authors can not control providing information about their works, the court said, and “Google’s profit motivation does not in these circumstances justify denial of fair use”. If the library had created its own digital copy to enable its provision of fair use digital searches, the making of the digital copy would not have been infringement.
All Tech looked at the “fair use” test on Tuesday in the context of Twitter removing sports media accounts after National Football League and other organizations complained about GIFs of sports highlights violating their copyright of game broadcasts.
But the court dismissed these arguments, as a result of Google would exclusively make out there “details about” the books, and “snippets” from them, with out permitting entry to substantial elements of the books. It planned ultimately to scan over 100 million books, including material from the New York Public Library, Library of Congress and several major universities.
Google spokesman Aaron Stein told in a statement the project is like a “card catalogue for the digital age”.
In addition, up to three image “snippets” are shown, containing about 1/8 of a book’s page. The court stated that while authors of works should benefit from their copyrights, the ultimate beneficiary should be the public.
As for the second factor, the court found it not significant that the majority of the books Google digitized were nonfiction.
The Authors Guild has said that Google makes 78% of the books, including those under copyright, available for display to its users for free, through the use of “snippets” – short bits – of the books online.
Ever go to Google to read an excerpt of a book?
She made it clear the Authors Guild planned to appeal the decision.
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The case was originally filed in 2005 as a class action. Instead, the fair use issue was litigated, and Google won at the district court in 2013.
