EFF, Public Knowledge Praise 2nd Circuit's Google Books Ruling
Public interest groups praised the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Friday affirming that the Google Books project to digitize portions of the world’s books is an acceptable example of fair use. A three-judge 2nd Circuit panel said Google…
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Books’ “snippet view” is likely to cause some book sales losses, but that “does not suffice to make the copy an effectively competing substitute” (see 1510160063). The decision “is a victory for the public,” Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Raza Panjwani said in a statement: “Researchers can now spend seconds, not lifetimes, searching through libraries across the world to identify relevant books. If copyright law is truly intended ‘to promote the progress of science and the useful arts,’ then this is precisely the kind of access-enhancing use it should permit.” The 2nd Circuit ruling “stresses that the reason ‘transformativeness’ matters is that it helps justify the copying,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post. “Google’s justification is plain: to provide otherwise unavailable information to the public. Relying on the court’s earlier ruling in the [HathiTrust] case, the opinion finds that Google’s use is highly transformative. The court also firmly rejects the claim that Google’s commercial nature undermined any claim of fair use.”