Google Books Ruling is a Huge Victory for Online Innovation Timothy B. Lee - The Washington Post
go to original November 18, 2013

It's taken almost a decade, but the courts have finally handed down a ruling on Google's audacious project to scan millions of books to build a book search engine. The ruling is a decisive victory for Google, copyright's fair use doctrine and online innovation.

When Google started work on its book search engine a decade ago, the company realized that getting the approval of copyright holders would be a logistical nightmare. Not only would major publishers likely demand high fees for permission to scan their books, but for many older works, it would be difficult to even figure out who the appropriate copyright holder was. So Google took a gamble, scanning library books without seeking copyright holders' permission and relying on copyright's fair use doctrine as a justification.

Last week, the gamble paid off, as Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York handed Google a big victory. Chin praised the Google Books project for its many public benefits, and concluded that the project's transformative use of copyrighted books meant that the use of the books was legal under copyright's fair use doctrine.

Read the rest at The Washington Post

(Photo by Joe Shlabotnik)

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