Why Authors Alliance Supports a Broader View of Fair Use Than the Authors Guild | Authors Alliance

"In December 2015, the Authors Guild asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals ruling that Google had made fair use of the in-copyright books that Google scanned from research library collections for its Book Search project in order to index their contents and serve up snippets in response to user search queries. Seven amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs were filed in February in support of the Guild’s position. (The briefs can be found here.) A common theme running through these briefs is that fair use should not be available as a defense to copyright infringement unless the defendant’s use resulted in the creation of a new work of authorship, such as a parody of a popular song or a critical commentary that quotes from the criticized author’s work. If someone merely uses an author’s work for a different purpose than the original and does not create a new work, the briefs argue that this should not be considered 'transformative,' as the Second Circuit has ruled in the Google case, or weigh in favor of fair use ..."