Google wins their book-scanning case

The judge ruled fair use, essentially.

US Circuit Judge Denny Chin said the book scanning amounted to fair use because it was “highly transformative” and because it didn’t harm the market for the original work.

“Google Books provides significant public benefits,” Chin wrote, describing it as “an essential research tool” and noting that the scanning service has expanded literary access for the blind and helped preserve the text of old books from physical decay.

Chin also rejected the theory that Google was depriving authors of income, noting that the company does not sell the scans or make whole copies of books available. He concluded, instead, that Google Books served to help readers discover new books and amounted to “new income from authors.”

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I agree with the judge, and I think the Authors' Guild has been rather... quixotic.

robjvargas said:

Google needs to be sure that it's respecting copyright, but I've always had the impression that it's done exactly that.

And yeah, I'm with blacbird on expecting this to appeal all the way up.

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To be honest, I think it's less about Google respecting copyright than just saying, hey, let's scan the books and sort out the legal rights and wrongs later. They were on the hook for billions in damages if the chips fell the other way, but they can afford it, and they believed (as I do) that the social utility of the project would be enough to tip the scales in the long run.

Compare the Google Street View project - they went around photographing everything, and hoovering up broadcast Wifi data, and eventually were sanctioned for the latter - they overstepped the bounds of what the courts would accept, and you could interpret that as a lack of respect for privacy. But the result is a much better maps/location services for everyone, and the Wifi stuff didn't appear to end up hurting anyone. (I think it was probably right to slap them on the wrist, but accept they did a good and useful thing in the long run.)