SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
EXPLORE +
  • About infoDOCKET
  • Academic Libraries on LJ
  • Research on LJ
  • News on LJ
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Libraries
    • Academic Libraries
    • Government Libraries
    • National Libraries
    • Public Libraries
  • Companies (Publishers/Vendors)
    • EBSCO
    • Elsevier
    • Ex Libris
    • Frontiers
    • Gale
    • PLOS
    • Scholastic
  • New Resources
    • Dashboards
    • Data Files
    • Digital Collections
    • Digital Preservation
    • Interactive Tools
    • Maps
    • Other
    • Podcasts
    • Productivity
  • New Research
    • Conference Presentations
    • Journal Articles
    • Lecture
    • New Issue
    • Reports
  • Topics
    • Archives & Special Collections
    • Associations & Organizations
    • Awards
    • Funding
    • Interviews
    • Jobs
    • Management & Leadership
    • News
    • Patrons & Users
    • Preservation
    • Profiles
    • Publishing
    • Roundup
    • Scholarly Communications
      • Open Access

December 3, 2014 by Gary Price

Google Books: Authors Guild and Google Meet in a Federal Appeals Court (Roundup)

December 3, 2014 by Gary Price

From Courthouse News Service:

Profit motive aside, Google’s digital book database does not appear to be much different from the Hathitrust Digital Library offered to college students, a panel of 2nd Circuit judges seemed to agree at a hearing on Wednesday.
[Clip]
The same three judges who presided over the Hathitrust case heard the Authors Guild’s challenge against Google Books on Wednesday.
Before the 90-minute hearing began, Judge Pierre Leval announced that the “extremely important and complex issues” at issue warranted giving both sides a half hour to speak, and he peppered both with the most questions throughout the arguments.
The guild’s lawyer Paul Smith kicked off proceedings by noting that Google, unlike Hathitrust, stood to gain “billions and billions of dollars every year” on the search engine.
But only moments after he made this point, Leval cut him off by stating, “There is no distinction to be drawn between commercial and non-commercial [use].”

From Publishers Weekly:

Smith also argued that Google’s program differed from HathiTrust because Google displayed snippets—an argument that was the subject of some speculation after the Second Circuit, in one line of its decision upholding the HathiTrust verdict, noted that it was “important” that the HathiTrust does not display any of the works made available for searching. But the judges did not seem terribly concerned with snippets, and Smith offered only a tortured argument: Snippets “are not harmless,” he said, because researchers can simply use Google to look up quotes and facts, without ever paying for the book.
Judge Cabranes pushed Waxman on Google’s underlying profit motive, getting Waxman to concede that Google did see the project as having some value to its business, despite having made no profit on the project, and investing over $125 million in it. But Waxman only conceded what was already on record: that Google does benefit from the database by drawing people to Google’s search engine.

From Reuters:

Paul Smith, who represents the Authors Guild and several individual writers, told a three-judge panel at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that the Google Books project was a “quintessentially commercial” infringement designed to protect the company’s “crown jewel” search engine.
But Seth Waxman, a lawyer for Google, said the project “revolutionized” how people find books and, contrary to the authors’ claims, would actually boost sales by introducing works to more readers.
“There is no evidence in this record, none, of any market harm to the authors,” he said.

From the Associated Press:

The Authors Guild had appealed a judge’s ruling that tossed out its lawsuit, saying the Internet giant is violating copyright laws by failing to make transformative “fair use” under copyright law of the books it copies.
The author’s group wants Google Inc. to pay $750 for each of the more than 20 million copyright books it has already copied.
“In our view, the entire book search program is fair use,” Waxman said.

From Bloomberg:

A lawyer for the world’s biggest search-engine company called the project “incredibly transformative,” arguing its mission to help people find books online makes Google’s display of parts of the books a “fair use” under copyright law.

See Also: The Authors Guild Files Brief in Google Books Appeal & Proposes That Congress Establish a National Digital Library (April 11, 2014)
See Also: Roundup: Google Prevails in Authors Guild Lawsuit, Summary Judgment Filed New York District Court (November 14, 2013)

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Conference Presentations, Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, News, Roundup

SHARE:

About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Job Zone

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Infodocket Posts

Just Released: Calculators Now Emulated at The Internet Archive (The Calculator Drawer)

From an Internet Archive Blog Post by Jason Scott: It’s time to add another family of emulated older technology to the Internet Archive. The vast majority of platforms within what ...

Journal Article: "Crossref as a Bibliographic Discovery Tool in the Arts and Humanities"

The article linked below was recently published by Quantitative Science Studies. Title Crossref as a Bibliographic Discovery Tool in the Arts and Humanities Authors Ángel Borrego Universitat de Barcelona, Melcior ...

Montana: ImagineIF Trustees Hold Special Meeting on Library Security Concerns; Pennsylvania: Philly’s Free Library is Making Space for...

Colorado: Suspensions Increase at Pikes Peak Library District Under New Security Protocols (via The Gazette) Montana: ImagineIF Trustees Hold Special Meeting on Library Security Concerns (via Daily Inter Mountain) North ...

Not Real News: An Associated Press Roundup of Untrue Stories Shared Widely on Social Media This Week

From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...

Report: "Australian Authors to Receive Compensation for E-Book Loans for First Time"

From The Sydney Morning Herald: Authors, illustrators, and editors will be compensated for e-book and audiobook library borrowings for the first time, in a move by the federal government to ...

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Publishes Customer Research Agenda

From the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): A draft Customer Research Agenda was open for public review and comment in October 2022. “We’re grateful for the feedback we received ...

Report: "A Watermark for Chatbots Can Expose Text Written by an AI"

From MIT Technology Review: Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we’re reading are written by a ...

The Accessibility of Federal Information and Data: A Brief Overview of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (Updated...

From the Congressional Research Service: Nearly one in four Americans has a disability, according to 2018 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Congress has recognized that in addition to making ...

NY Times: "New York Public Library Acquires Joan Didion’s Papers"

From The NY Times: When [Joan] Didion died in 2021 at age 87, the news set off an outpouring of tributes to a writer who fused penetrating insight and idiosyncratic personal voice, ...

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: María Estorino Named Vice Provost for University Libraries and University Librarian

Below, Find the Full Text of a Letter Sent to the Carolina Community From Kevin M. Guskiewicz University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and J. ...

Boston Public Library Celebrates Black History Month with Annual “Black Is…” Booklist & Special Events

From the Boston Public Library: The Boston Public Library is proud to contribute to the celebration of Black History Month with its annual “Black Is…” booklist. The booklist aims to commemorate ...

Research Resources: New Online Tool Provides Health Snapshot of All 435 U.S. Congressional Districts (Congressional District Health Dashboard)

From NYU Langone: Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, unveiled the Congressional District Health Dashboard (CDHD), a new online tool that ...

ADVERTISEMENT

FOLLOW US ON TWITTER

Tweets by infoDOCKET

ADVERTISEMENT

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • Programs+
  • Design
  • Leadership
  • People
  • COVID-19
  • Advocacy
  • Opinion
  • INFOdocket
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Booklists
  • Prepub Alert
  • Book Pulse
  • Media
  • Readers' Advisory
  • Self-Published Books
  • Review Submissions
  • Review for LJ

Awards

  • Library of the Year
  • Librarian of the Year
  • Movers & Shakers 2022
  • Paralibrarian of the Year
  • Best Small Library
  • Marketer of the Year
  • All Awards Guidelines
  • Community Impact Prize

Resources

  • LJ Index/Star Libraries
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies

Events & PD

  • Online Courses
  • In-Person Events
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Submit Features/News
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Careers at MSI


© 2023 Library Journal. All rights reserved.


© 2022 Library Journal. All rights reserved.