VALib v60n2 - Transformative Use: An Update on the Google Books Case An Interview With Jonathan Band

"In spite of early concerns about the quality of its metadata, best summarized by Geoffrey Nunberg in the August 31, 2009 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, librarians have come to appreciate Google Books for its power to search millions of books and its potential as a 'big data' source for the study of language and culture. Thus, the suits filed against Google by the Authors Guild and five publishers in 2005, which were soon consolidated, were viewed by many librarians as a threat to an irreplaceable resource. The suits asserted that Google’s scanning, maintaining a database for searching, and offering searchers short 'snippets' of the text of books infringed on copyright. A proposed settlement failed in 2011, and the publishers dropped their litigation in 2012. In November 2013 Judge Denny Chin issued a ruling in the case, by now with only the Authors Guild and a few individual authors as plaintiffs. Judge Chin found that Google’s use of the copyrighted material was covered by the doctrine of fair use because it is transformative as well as very beneficial to society. The Authors Guild has appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Jonathan Band, an attorney who specializes in intellectual property law and who has often worked with the American Library Association (ALA) in its efforts to support open access and fair use, has followed the Google Books case since the beginning. He, along with Cindy Cohn who represented the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed an influential amicus brief in the case on behalf of ALA, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries. Mr. Band, who was earlier interviewed in Virginia Libraries in the spring of 2008, has been generous enough to respond to a number of questions about the Google Books case and about its implications for the future of copyright law ..."