Appeals Court Finds Scanning To Be Fair Use 34
NewYorkCountryLawyer (912032) writes In Authors Guild v Hathitrust, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found that scanning whole books and making them searchable for research use is a fair use. In reaching its conclusion, the 3-judge panel reasoned, in its 34-page opinion (PDF), that the creation of a searchable, full text database is a "quintessentially transformative use", that it was "reasonably necessary" to make use of the entire works, that maintaining four copies of the database was reasonably necessary as well, and that the research library did not impair the market for the originals. Needless to say, this ruling augurs well for Google in Authors Guild v. Google, which likewise involves full text scanning of whole books for research.
Needless to say (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesnt bode well for Google as Google are not using scanning for research, they are a publicly listed corporation scanning books to profit from showing the public books and adverts and selling the resulting data to anyone who will pay them with the authors getting 0 compensation.
Re:Appeals Court Finds Scanning To Be Fair Use (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, for a split second there...I read it as: Court finds port scanning to be fair.
Yes slashdot has a long tradition of failing to use basic literacy and then feeling an overwhelming urge to share this fact with the group.
Re:Key Point Missing (Score:4, Insightful)
"So what is the point of scanning and making the info from the scan available if they don't reveal anything from the text?"
The same point behind card catalogs at the library, or Google: so that you can find sources that have the kind of information you are looking for instead of trying to buy all of the books everywhere on the off chance that any one might have what you are looking for.
Re: Key Point Missing (Score:4, Insightful)
The other main reason would be to prepare the work for public release before it's eventual copyright lapse. That's assuming that Google is still around in 500 years (at least the way copyright extensions are handled it'll likely be at least that long).