Google Sued By Authors Over Google Print

By Meredith Murray

Google Inc. was charged with massive copyright infringement in a class action suit filed by the Authors Guild and three other writers (Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles, and Daniel Hoffman) on Tuesday over the Google Print program. The Authors Guild, which represents over 8,000 American authors, accused Google of not seeking the approval of authors to include their works in the program.

Google Print is a beta program that would allow people to search for the content of books using the Internet. Google is currently scanning books from libraries into the database, making them available to search. They are working with the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, The New York Public Library, and Oxford University to scan their books in part or whole into the database.

Although Google allows copyright holders to refuse inclusion of their works in Google Print, content users generally must have authorization to use the copyrighted material.

Google made a statement in response to the lawsuit, claiming that its activities are consistent with the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and its underlying principles. The fair use concept allows copyright material to be used in limited circumstances without the permission of the author. Google stated that when users search the database, they find a "brief snippet of text where their search term appears," as opposed to the entire text.

However, Google is copying entire works into the database, which can be seen as copyright infringement, regardless of how much of the text a user will see.

Google argues that their Google Print program will encourage sales, rather than cause a decrease in the sale of printed books. "This ability to introduce millions of users to millions of titles can only expand the market for authors’ books, which is precisely what copyright law is intended to foster," their statement explained.