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Publishers sue over
Google internet library
20 October 2005 |
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A day after Google was forced to
changed the name of its e-mail service after
legal action from a small British financial
firm, the search engine company is facing
another challenge in the courts.
The Association of American Publishers is
seeking an injunction to stop work on the Google
Print Library Project, which involves indexing
millions of copyrighted books from three major
American university libraries and making them
available on the internet.
The lawsuit, which seeks recovery of legal costs
but no additional damages, cites the
"continuing, irreparable and imminent harm
publishers are suffering ... due to Google’s
wilful [copyright] infringement to further its
own commercial purposes." It was filed in the US
District Court in New York on behalf of five
publishers: McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education,
Penguin Group USA, Simon & Schuster and John
Wiley & Sons.
Google called the legal action "short-sighted"
and said the project was an "historic effort to
make millions of books easier for people to find
and buy."
David Drummond, Google’s general counsel and
vice-president of corporate development, denied
that the company is infringing copyright.
"Creating an easy-to-use index of books is fair
use under copyright law and supports the purpose
of copyright: to increase the awareness and
sales of books directly benefiting copyright
holders," he said.
"This is not a matter of copying material and
putting it online," Mr Drummond said. "It’s the
equivalent of an electronic card catalogue. Our
objective is to help publishers and authors."
Under a deal negotiated by Google and the
publishing industry, copyright holders have
until November 1 to notify the search engine if
they do not want works to appear on the internet
in full. In these cases, the site will display a
short sample of the work and a link to the
online bookshop Amazon.com, where users will be
able to buy a hard copy.
Publishers and authors have said it should not
be the responsibility of copyright holders to
let Google know that they wish their rights to
be respected. They would prefer a system in
which publishers told Google which books they
would allow to appear online and such that all
others would be out of bounds by default.
Today’s legal action follows a similar move last
month by the Authors Guild, an American group
representing writers including Michael Crichton
and Barbara Taylor Bradford, which sued the
internet company in an attempt to halt the
project and recover damages.
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