Google Print - copyright
infringement by scanning books?
Five publishing houses -
McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education and Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster and
John Wiley & Sons - filed a suit in New York against Google Print.
Under the program, Google plans to scan and index
millions of copyrighted books taken from the collections of the three
universities Harvard, Stanford and Michigan. The suit seeks a declaration
that Google infringes on the publishers' copyrights when the Web search leader
scans entire books without permission of copyright owners. Google claims, that
the scanning of the full text of the books is necessary to create a searchable
catalogue of the books located within the libraries' collections.
Only snippets of copyrighted works will be available
through the search engine. There are no plans to make full copies of
copyrighted works available without their owners' permission.
In September, the Authors Guild joined with three US writers - Herbert Mitgang,
Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman - to file a similar lawsuit. The Authors Guild
filing was a class-action lawsuit that seeks damages, the publishers' suit seeks
a declaration that Google is committing copyright infringement by scanning books
(also
see Update 33)
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October 20, 2005: Sherriff,
Lucy,
Publishers join forces to sue Google, The Register:
"The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is suing Google over its plans
to make scans of millions of books available online."
-
October 19, 2005: Italie,
Hillel,
Publishers Sue Google Over Scanning Plans, ABC News:
"Just weeks after a leading authors' organization sued Google for copyright
infringement, the Association of American Publishers has also filed suit
against the search engine giant's plans to scan and index books for the
Internet."
Also see the Google Print special
coverage!