Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Authors Guild sues Google over library project

CNET News.com: "update The Authors Guild on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against search engine Google, alleging that its scanning and digitizing of library books constitutes a 'massive' copyright infringement.
As part of its Google Print Library Project, the company is working to scan all or parts of the book collections of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University. It intends to make those texts searchable on Google and to sell advertisements on the Web pages.
'This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law,' Nick Taylor, president of the New York-based Authors Guild, said in a statement about the lawsuit, which is seeking class action status. 'It's not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.'
In response, Google defended the program in a company blog posting."

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