Google To Resume Controversial Book-Copying Project

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October 28, 2005 (6:08 PM EDT)

By Antone Gonsalves , TechWeb Technology News

Google Inc. plans to resume its controversial copying of library books next week, despite two lawsuits from publishers and authors opposed to the project.

The Mountain View, Calif., search-engine giant would restart the program Nov. 1, as planned, a spokesman said Friday.

Google had suspended the scanning of copyrighted works from libraries, in order to give publishers time to contact the company if they objected to having their books stored in Google's database.

Believing that Google has the obligation to contact them first, major publishers represented by the Association of American Publishers sued Google this month for digitizing books without the permission of copyright holders.

It was the second such suit filed against Google. A month earlier, the Authors Guild filed a class-action lawsuit.

In defending the library project, Google points to fair use, an exception in the U.S. Copyright Act that allows for the reprinting of portions of copyrighted material for certain purposes, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.

Google announced its Print Library Project last year, saying it planned to digitize books from the collections of Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Oxford University and the New York Public Library. The latter two are making available only books in the public domain.