The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling on Monday 18 April 2016 authorising Google to implement its colossal digital bookshop project, Google Books. Google's official objective is to simplify user access to books, especially those that would be inaccessible otherwise than through a digital process (such as out-of-print and non-republished books), while respecting the rights of authors and publishers. Is this really the case, as Google's project has been hampered by numerous class action lawsuits over copyright infringement?
AEstablished in December 2004 with the aim of organizing information around the world and making it universally available and useful, Google Books is today a tool for intra-text searching, consulting books online or on mobile devices, building up personal collections, and downloading royalty-free works. It is also an online bookstore via the Google Play store, a tool for finding out where to borrow a copy of a book from the library or buy it. Google Books also allows users to obtain additional information on books.
Google works with publishers and some 40 libraries around the world that allow the online search giant to add their books to its digital library. While some of the works in Google Books are royalty-free and available for download, the majority are copyrighted. For the latter, only a few short excerpts are available online, and the publishers themselves choose which parts users can view. Google also wants to respect copyrights and protect the works, in particular by blocking the "print", "cut", "copy" and "save" functions on the pages displaying the content of the books.
However, since 2005, Google's project has been hampered by class action lawsuits over copyright infringement. The Authors Guild, a company that brings together more than 8,000 American authors, and several publishers in the United States view Google Books as a commercial enterprise that has brought down sales of their books. The plaintiffs also allege massive copyright infringement and a failure to provide fair compensation to authors and publishers.
How the Google Library works and its objectives
For the American firm, the aim is to digitize books, whether in the public domain or not, made available through partnerships with libraries in the United States and Europe.
At the end of the digitization process, the user has several possibilities:
- If the work has fallen into the public domain or if the author author authorizes it, the entire work can be consulted.
- On the contrary, if it is a work still covered by copyright, and with the author's agreement, access to a limited number of pages of the work is possible.
- If the author does not agree, a preview says "snippet" is possible, i.e. a selection of short excerpts from the book, or simply an overview of general information about the book.
To date, Google has identified 20 million works already digitized that can finally be made available to the Internet user legally, thanks to this decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Legal Issues for Authors' Rights
The Supreme Court's decision in Google's favor marks the end of a legal dispute between the American firm and the Authors Guild, which has been going on for about ten years.
In fact, since 2005, the Authors Guild, which represents the largest authors' union in the United States, had been suing Google for copyright infringement by reproduction (digitization of works) due to the lack of consent of the authors.
The New York Court of Appeals ruled in Google's favor in October 2015, upholding the trial court's 2013 ruling on the grounds that Google's use of the works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... the use of Google's works is covered by the U.S. legal exception of "... Fair Use" ("acceptable use").
The trial judge had thus highlighted the public interest, justifying the lack of consent of the authors for the use of the works. For its part, the Court of Appeal recalled the criteria of the American exception of "Fair Use", in particular the need for a transformative use of the work, allowing only a short extract of the work to appear and not providing any real substitute for the original works.
The Supreme Court's decision of Monday 18 April puts an end to the legal battle thus initiated and dismisses the union of American authors of its demands.
While this decision is certainly welcome, particularly for the libraries that are partners in the Google Book initiative, many authors are concerned that such a solution will prevent them from benefiting from the digital use of their works.
As a result, only the most recognized or subsidized authors will be able to afford to pursue a career in the literary field, when it is already a low-stability and low-paying profession. In this respect, there is a risk that in the future there will be a redistribution of profits from the creative sector to the new technology sector.
The authors' union expressed its disappointment: "Blinded by arguments about the benefits to the public, the decision [...] tells us that Google, not the authors, deserves to benefit from the digitization of their books.
This is further proof that digital technology is undeniably affecting the creative and distribution sectors, whether in the literary, musical or audiovisual fields.
