A US court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by authors seeking to block Google from digitizing millions of books, ruling that it is a legal use under US copyright laws.
Judge Denny Chin accepted Google's argument that digitizing books so that excerpts are available online in search engines is a lawful use.
Google started this project in 2004 and has already digitized more than 20 million books.
"In my opinion, the Google Books service provides significant benefit to the public," Chin noted.
This Google project not only offers “a new and efficient way for readers and researchers to find books,” the judge added, but “has become an indispensable search tool, as it helps librarians catalog and find sources, makes the interlibrary loan process more efficient, and makes it easier to find and check clippings.”.
Moreover, Chin pointed out that Google does not sell the digitized books itself.
Authors and publishers had complained that Google was violating their copyrights in this way. The internet group reached an agreement with the publishers last year.
The vast majority (93%) of the books uploaded to Google Books are not literary, but biographies, cookbooks, dictionaries, treatises, or university textbooks.
Source: portal.kathimerini.gr
