Google Books’ Win May Threaten Other Media

A decade ago, Google announced plans to scan and make searchable the world’s books, and it’s been fighting copyright lawsuits from authors and publishers ever since. After a seven-year legal battle, in 2012 the major U.S. publishers reached a settlement with Google that allows them to keep copyrighted books from being displayed. On Oct. 16 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Google and against the Authors Guild, meaning writers can’t stop the search giant from adding their work to its online library of more than 20 million books. The saga has had enough twists and turns to fill a—well, you know.

“Google’s unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses,” Judge Pierre Leval wrote in the appellate decision. Even though the company stands to profit from the project, its digital library is different enough and excerpts limited enough in comparison to the original books that it doesn’t need to license the material, Leval says.