Open Access News

The lawsuit is a setback to Google's library program, the case has broader implications: A ruling against Google could disrupt its aims to digitize and make searchable all kinds of media and information...."If Google were to lose this, it might hinder not just Google Print but all sorts of technologies," says Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Chances are next to nil that a negative ruling would jeopardize the Internet search business, since Google's practice of copying Web pages for search purposes is generally accepted by Web publishers. But a legal ruling forcing Google to gain explicit permission from all other copyright holders could hobble attempts to apply the same method to existing media, like books, film, or sound recordings in programs like Google Print and Google Video. "Web search would not exist today if you had to go door-to-door asking permission," says Google's intellectual-property counsel Alexander MacGillivray. The sheer volume of information is too vast to get permission on a case-by-case basis....In the summer negotiations, members of the AAP proposed that Google use the Bowker database, which assigns a specific number, called an ISBN, to every book published since 1967, for determining which books required permission. For all out-of-print copyrighted titles without ISBN numbers, the AAP would have a "more relaxed" agreement with Google, says Alan Adler, general counsel of the AAP. The AAP offer was untenable, Google's MacGillivray says. "If copyright law were such that if [a library] wanted to create a card catalog it had to find every single person who had the rights to these books...imagine how few books" would be accessible, he says. "It turns copyright law on its head."...Google says that, regardless of the suit, it plans to resume scanning copyrighted books on Nov. 1....Almost exactly a year ago, publishers showered praise on the search giant when it announced a slightly different program called Print for Publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. In that program, Google invited publishers to send it specific titles that it would scan so that it could make excerpts show up in search results, and publishers lauded the program as an innovative way to promote new and old titles alike. All of the companies involved in the litigation are partners with Google in that program, and say they plan to remain partners.