Google was recently under investigation by the US Courts for their Google Books software, but it has been decided that Google Books is a legal software that does not infringe on any copyright. So what exactly was Google Books under investigation for?
The Problem with Google Books
Google Books is a software that digitizes books so that people will have easier access to viewing them. Google Inc. has already made digital copies of tens of millions of books from major companies and has established a tremendous service for users.
According to the US Court, what Google was being charged with was copyright infringement of the books that they had on this service. Authors in the past also commented on the fact that this could potentially end up spoiling their work. In what has been over a decade long dispute, starting in 2005, it has been decided by the court that Google will not be sued.
Why They Were Let Off the Hook
Thankfully, from Google’s standpoint, they’ll not be charged with any sort of copyright infringement. The Judge residing over the case, Denny Chin, ultimately ruled that Google’s digitization of their millions of books did not violate any sort of copyright because they only showed short sections of the books in their database. Chin also mentioned that for someone to look up a full entirety of work they would have to repeatedly enter different search requests, which he decided would be too difficult.
Another voice, Judge Pierre N. Leval, also agreed that there was no copyright violations here. Leval stated that ‘the snippet feature substantially protects against its serving as an effectively competing substitute for plaintiffs’ books. Snippet view, at best and after a large commitment of manpower, produces discontinuous, tiny fragments, amounting in the aggregate to no more than 16% of a book. This does not threaten the rights holders with any significant harm to the value of their copyrights or diminish their harvest of copyright revenue.’
It was acknowledged, however, that book sales could potentially take a hit because people might just start searching for a specific part of the text rather than purchasing the entirety of the work. The good news for Google is that they can put this behind them and keep their Google Books service going strong as long as they keep doing it the exact same way they have been.
