The Laboratorium : Google Books Round 86: Libraries Win Yet Again

"The Second Circuit’s decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust is out. This, as a reminder, is the offshoot of the Google Books litigation in which the Authors Guild inexplicably sued Google’s library partners. The trial judge, Harold Baer, held for the libraries in 2012 in a positively exuberant opinion: I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses made by Defendants’ MDP [Mass Digitization Project] and would require that I terminate this invaluable contribution to the progress of science and cultivation of the arts that at the same time effectuates the ideals espoused by the ADA. The Second Circuit’s opinion drops the grand rhetoric, but otherwise the bottom line is basically the same: mass digitization to make a search engine is fair use, and so is giving digital copies to the print-disabled. The opinion on appeal is sober, conservative, and to the point; it is the work of a court that does not think this is a hard case ..."