Authors' Groups Seek Fair-Use Motion in HathiTrust Lawsuit - PageView - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The Authors Guild and other plaintiffs in a lawsuit over mass digitization of books have asked the judge in the case to rule on the other side’s fair-use claim. The authors’ groups brought suit last year against the HathiTrust digital repository and the universities of Michigan, California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Cornell. At issue is the fate of millions of scanned works, many of them under copyright. The defendants have said their activities are protected by the First Amendment and by relevant sections of U.S. copyright law. In yesterday’s filing, the plaintiffs asked the court “to hold that defendants’ mass book digitization and orphan works projects are not protected by any defense recognized by copyright law.” “This is the first motion that squarely places before a court the question of whether the unauthorized mass digitization of library books is a fair use under U.S. law,” the guild’s statement said...."