Google dealt blow in book scanning lawsuit | Ars Technica

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-06-01

Summary:

“The coalition of authors suing to stop Google Book Search scored a key victory on Thursday as the judge overseeing the case ruled that three individual authors and the Author's Guild could represent the class of all authors whose works had been scanned by Google. Google had sought the opposite result, arguing that including all authors in a single lawsuit would make the case too complex, and that most authors actually supported the scanning project.  Judge Denny Chin, who rejected a controversial settlement of the case last year, ruled on two distinct legal issues. The first was over whether the Author's Guild was entitled to serve as a representative of its members. Google had argued that only individual authors could be plaintiffs because the case will require the participation of those individual plaintiffs to consider issues such as fair use. But Judge Chin rejected Google's argument. ‘The associations' claims of copyright infringement and requests for injunctive relief will not require the participation of each individual association member,’ he wrote.  More importantly, Judge Chin gave the green light for three individual plaintiffs—Betty Miles, Joseph Goulden, and Jim Bouton—to represent the vastly larger class of ‘persons residing in the United States who hold a United States copyright interest in one or more Books reproduced by Google as part of its Library Project.’  Google had argued that this group was so large and diverse, with so many divergent interests, that it wasn't possible for all of their interests to be represented in a single lawsuit. For example, the fair use considerations behind scanning a cookbook might be radically different from those that apply to scanning a novel or a children's book.  Also, a Google-sponsored survey found that 58 percent of authors actually approved of Google's book-scanning program. Therefore, Google argued, it wasn't reasonable for the class of all affected authors to be represented by project opponents.  Judge Chin rejected these arguments. He ruled that the complex legal issues could be resolved by considering subsets of the affected work (all cookbooks, all novels). Considering every book individually was overkill. And, he wrote, the fact that ‘some class members may prefer to leave the alleged violation of their rights unremedied is not a basis for finding the lead plaintiffs inadequate.’  The ruling is an important victory for the authors because it would have been financially difficult for the three individual authors to carry the lawsuit forward on an individual basis. Thursday's ruling means that plaintiffs' lawyers will be more interested in taking the case in expectation of hefty damages if the authors win. The plaintiffs will also be able to rely on the resources of the Author's Guild to cover their legal costs. So now the case can move forward to consider the merits of Google's fair use arguments.”

Link:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/google-dealt-blow-in-book-scanning-lawsuit/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.litigation oa.google.settlement oa.fair_use oa.google.books oa.authors_guild

Date tagged:

06/01/2012, 14:45

Date published:

06/01/2012, 10:45