Google Books Digitization Project Constitutes Fair Use, 2nd Circuit Says
Google's project to digitize portions of the world’s books constitutes an acceptable example of fair use, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday in a ruling. A three-judge 2nd Circuit panel affirmed a 2013 ruling by the U.S.…
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District Court in New York, which has also rejected the lawsuit led by the Authors Guild that challenged Google’s project on the grounds that it would significantly hurt the publishing industry (see report in the Nov. 15, 2013, issue). Legal experts previously said they anticipated that Google would prevail at the 2nd Circuit (see 1410300049">1410300049). Although publishing portions of books free via Google Books’ “snippet view” may “cause some loss of sales,” that “does not suffice to make the copy an effectively competing substitute,” Judge Pierre Leval said in the 2nd Circuit's opinion. Sales losses from the Google Books snippets “will generally occur in relation to interests that are not protected by the copyright” like confirming simple facts, while copyright law “protects only the author’s manner of expression,” the court said. Google Books allows a maximum of 77 percent of a book’s content to be displayed via snippet view, and those portions are divided up in a way that doesn’t allow long sequences of text to be read. “Google’s division of the page into tiny snippets is designed to show the searcher just enough context surrounding the searched term to help her evaluate whether the book falls within the scope of her interest,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Snippet view thus adds importantly to the highly transformative purpose of identifying books of interest to the searcher.” The Authors Guild believes “that the Supreme Court will see fit to correct the Second Circuit’s reduction of fair use to a one-factor test -- whether the use is, in the court’s eye, ‘transformative,’” Executive Director Mary Rasenberger said in a statement.