Google has a court appeal decision in its favour regarding its digitizations of books for the online library it operates:
It added: "Snippet view, at best and after a large commitment of manpower, produces discontinuous, tiny fragments, amounting in the aggregate to no more than 16 per cent of a book. This does not threaten the rights holders with any significant harm to the value of their copyrights or diminish their harvest of copyright revenue."
The three-judge appeals panel did acknowledge, though, that some book sales would likely be lost if someone were merely searching for a portion of text to ascertain a fact. It suggested that a student writing a paper on Franklin D. Roosevelt might seek to know when Roosevelt was stricken with polio. But it said the search would turn up multiple sources.
Challenge dates back to 2005
The Authors Guild and various authors had challenged Google in 2005, contending that the digital book project violated their rights.
Google Inc. has made digital copies of tens of millions of books from major libraries and established a publicly available search function. It planned ultimately to scan over 100 million books, including material from the New York Public Library, Library of Congress and several major universities.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/google-books-scanning-1.3274673
