The decade-long legal
fight over Google's effort to create a digital library of millions of books is
finally over.
The
Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear
a challenge from authors who had argued that the tech giant's
project was "brazen violation of copyright law" -- effectively ending
the legal battle in Google's favor.
Without the Supreme Court
taking up the case, a federal appeals court ruling from October, which found
that the book-scanning program fell under the umbrella of fair use, will stand.
Back in 2004, Google
started scanning millions of books from major research libraries -- creating a
vast database from the digitized copies known as Google Books. Users can search
Google Books for quotes or keywords, and it will display paragraphs or pages of
context for the results from within the books.
The Authors Guild started
complaining about the project in 2005, arguing that Google Books had
undermined writers by putting their work online for free.
Google and the Guild
worked out a settlement at one point, but it was rejected by a district court
judge in 2011. When the case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd
Circuit last year, a panel of three judges sided with Google -- finding that
the tech giant's efforts amounted to a "transformative" use of the
material and that snippets from searching the database don't amount to a
"substantial substitute" for an original book.
The Authors Guild then
asked the Supreme Court to review the decision -- a request that was denied
Monday.
“Today authors suffered a
colossal loss,” Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson said in a statement
about the high court's decision. Other groups, including the Copyright
Alliance, also expressed disappointment at the decision.
"In declining to
take the case, the Supreme Court let stand a Second Circuit decision that
dramatically expands the boundaries of the fair use doctrine’s transformative
use test, which affects creators and copyright owners of all types,"
Copyright Alliance chief executive Keith Kupferschmid said in a statement.
Google, which had filed a
brief opposing the guild's appeal, praised the court's decision to pass on the
case.
"We are grateful
that the court has agreed to uphold the decision of the Second
Circuit, which concluded that Google Books is transformative and
consistent with copyright law," the company said in a statement. "The
product acts like a card catalog for the digital age by giving people a new way
to find and buy books while at the same time advancing the interests of
authors."
Source: washingtonpost
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