Book Scanning As Fair Use: Google Makes Its Case As Authors Guild Appeals Hathitrust Fair Use Ruling | Techdirt

"Two new developments in the two big cases concerning book scanning and fair use: first up, we've got the somewhat unsurprising news that the Authors Guild is appealing its rather massive loss against Hathitrust, the organization that was set up to scan books from a bunch of university library collections. As you may recall, Judge Harold Baer's ruling discussed how the book scanning in that case was obviously fair use. It was a near complete smackdown for the Authors Guild. The appeal will cover a few different issues beyond just fair use, such as why the Authors Guild itself is even the plaintiff in the case, since it doesn't actually hold any of the copyrights in question. It would seem that the Authors Guild has an uphill battle. Meanwhile, in a closely related case, involving the Authors Guild suing Google over its book scanning efforts, Google has filed its appeal brief in response to an earlier ruling, which said that the Authors Guild can represent authors and has standing to sue. Google is arguing that its offering is also a clear case of fair use, as in the Hathitrust case. This is something we thought Google should have pressed strongly from early on...  It also argues that the Authors Guild cannot represent the class of authors in the case, since many authors are helped by Google Books and don't agree with the Authors Guild that it's somehow evil. As a result of that (and how copyright law works) Google also points out that the fair use determination may need to be on a book by book basis, rather than as a whole ...  Not surprisingly, the argument here is compelling. Even if you don't buy the fair use argument, it's difficult to see how the Authors Guild can realistically represent such a diverse group of authors while claiming to represent them all. No matter what happens, as these cases move forward, I'm sure we'll have plenty to discuss."