Courthouse News Service -- Hathitrust Library's Fair- Use Win Survives Appeal

"The 'fair use' doctrine allows a digital library to create a full-text searchable database of copyrighted works and to make those works accessible, the 2nd Circuit ruled today.  Beginning in 2008, major universities and libraries partnered with Google to digitize their volumes. The HathiTrust Digital Library enabled more than 80 university and research libraries to store, secure and search their digital collections.  The library normally does not let users access digitized books in their entirety. Rather, it helps scholars and others find the copyrighted books at libraries through a database that delivers titles and page numbers via keyword search. Blind or print-disabled users can get special access to the original works.  The Authors Guild led a group of writers and advocacy groups in a lawsuit against HathiTrust and the partnering universities in 2011, alleging their distribution of digital copies of millions of copyrighted works infringed its members' copyrights ..."