Google Books Survives Legal Hurdle
On November 14, 2014, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted Google’s motion for summary judgment of copyright fair use in Authors Guild v. Google.
The highly anticipated decision arrives as copyright protection has been under stress, while courts grapple with copyright fair use in the age of digital content. Google came before the court on a class action charging copyright infringement for digitally copying more than 20 million books of several major research libraries, creating an electronic database of books, and making text available for online search through the use of “snippets” in Google Books.
The court found the use of published content in Google Books to be transformative, based on the balance of four factors determining copyright fair use:
- the purpose and character of the use
- the nature of the copyrighted work
- the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and
- the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
Purpose and character of the use
On the factor of the purpose and character of the use, the court found Google Books to be transformative for several reasons: (a) Google digitizes books and transforms expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars and researchers find desired content; (b) Google Books has become an important tool for libraries and librarians and cite-checkers as it helps to identify and find books; (c) Google Books uses “snippets” to help users locate books from vast libraries, and thus uses text content for a different purpose — the snippets of text act as pointers directing users to a broad selection of books — transforming book text into data for purposes of substantive research, including data mining and text mining in new areas, thereby opening up new fields of research; (d) words in books are being used in a new way — Google Books has created something new in the use of book text — the frequency of words and trends in their usage provide substantive information; and (e) Google Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books. Instead, it “adds value to the original” and allows for “the creation of new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings.” The first factor strongly favored a finding of fair use.
Nature of the copyrighted work
On the second factor, the nature of the copyrighted work, the court found the majority of text in Google Books to be non-fiction, which is given less copyright protection compared to books of fiction. In addition, the books were published and available to the public. These considerations favored a finding of fair use.
Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work
On the third factor, the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, the court found that Google limits the amount of text it displays in response to a search. Copying the entirety of the books was necessary to enable the fair use. On balance, the third factor weighed slightly against a finding of fair use.
Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value
On the fourth factor, the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work, the court found that Google does not sell its scans, Google Books makes possible the discovery of books, and the snippets prevent users from reproducing the book. The fourth factor weighed strongly in favor of a finding of fair use.
Overall, the balance of the four statutory factors when weighed together tipped in favor of a finding of fair use. The court found that Google Books provides: significant benefits; a valuable search tool to help users to efficiently identify and locate books; and a way to preserve books, facilitate access, generate new audiences and create new sources of income for authors and publisher.
As Neal Armstrong took his first step on the moon, he spoke the famous words “[o]ne small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Authors Guild v. Google stands as one small step for Google, one giant leap for copyright fair use. While copyright laws have a long way to go to catch up with the digital age, this decision has provided some relief to the increasing stress on fair use from advances in digital content.
About Paul R, Juhasz