Developments in the Google Library Project Case

Hello readers – we’re taking a moment today to talk a bit about a landmark case for the future of books and the publishing industry. In case you haven’t been following the news, Google has scanned millions upon millions of library books into a searchable database. From their site, readers can “see… information about the book, and in many cases… a few sentences....” In the future, Google wants to provide entire works.

What does this mean? Supporters argue that the world’s population, especially the poor, could potentially access and benefit from any book Google found. The very last copy of a book, out of print for 200 years and left at the bottom of one of our nation’s research library’s shelves, could suddenly find new life. Fans herald the effort as nothing short of a revolution in intellectual life as we know it.

Many people are resisting. Why? Google copied, without permission, work protected by copyright. Copyright is important because it says to an author “when you work hard to create something, you will be able to tell people how they can get what you’ve made. You can make money from it.” It’s hard to do for a living what others give away for free.

Those against Google’s plan sued. Google attempted to settle the case, but the settlement agreement, discussed by Publisher’s Weekly, was rejected in New York Federal District Court. The full rejection by Judge Chin can be found here, and more reactions can be found here.

Among the issues, Google wanted to secure future rights in the proposed settlement agreement. They tried to define a book as “orphaned” (without a rightsholder) any time the rightsholder could not be found. One woman pointed to a book her father, since deceased, had written. Because it was self-published, and her father had died, the book would be hard to locate rights for, even though the author left the rights to his daughter. Books whose rightsholders were simply too hard to find would automatically become free for Google (and only Google) to use, from cover to cover, unless an existing rightsholder both knew about Google’s use of the work and demanded that Google stop using it. The settlement would have turned copyright law on its head, opponents argued, giving Google the option to take any works that authors didn’t (perhaps repeatedly) nail down.

What do you think, readers? Do the benefits of such a library outweigh some protections that ensure authors can sell what they write in the first place? Or should Google have known better than to copy 12 million books and use copywritten content without asking? Is an “opt-in” option sufficient, given rightsholders who have passed on and taken their rights with them cannot “opt-in”? Are alternatives, such as a non-commercial public library preferable? Feasible? Weigh in in our comments!