Title: Great Expectations: The Google Books Project and the Strength of its Fair Use Defense
Abstract: From the advent of Gutenberg’s printing-press, which moved the written word into the printed form, technological innovation has been the impetus behind much of the development and refinement of copyright law. Today, the Google technology behind moving the printed word into a digital format, has now brought about a new debate in copyright law: whether the scanning of physical books in order to create a digital database is an infringement of copyright or is sanctioned under the Fair Use Doctrine. In an age where multiple e-reader manufacturers, authors, publishers, and distributors are vying for market share, the existence of unlicensed scans of copyrighted books is a controversial issue. Copyright policy balances upon the tension between incentivizing creativity by protecting the rights and interests of authors and providing society with access to a free flow of information. The Author’s Guild v. Google Inc. case currently being litigated, provides the perfect backdrop for analysis of the traditional fair use factors in the 21 st century. Google’s unlicensed scanning of books in order create their database, repurposes the creative whole of a book into metadata for research by the public without supplanting the original markets; this paper argues that this is a transformative work and thus a fair use of the copyrighted books. Despite the Author’s Guild’s argument for infringement, Google is likely to prevail under a fair use defense.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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