Guild Tells Court: Reject Google’s Risky, Market-Killing, Profit-Driven Project

Arguing that the Google Library Project violates authors’ rights to control the copying and distribution of their books, destroys a potential market for the works, and puts the material at greater risk of theft, the Authors Guild urges Judge Denny Chin to rule against Google in a court brief filed ahead of next Monday’s hearing on summary judgment.

While Google maintains that its mass unauthorized copying of books is “transformative,” and therefore protected as fair use, the Guild argues that merely digitizing a work doesn’t meet the legal standard of transformative.

The brief also says that a program as all-encompassing as the Library Project “eviscerates” any possibility that license holders could form a collective market for the works.

On the issue of security, the brief outlines the risks of Google making digitized books available without any accountability for keeping it safe. What’s worse, if such programs are considered fair use, “others will engage in their own unauthorized book digitization programs, putting more books within the reach of digital thieves,” the brief says.

The Guild rejects a number of Google’s justifications for the project, including the contention that it’s actually helping authors by increasing exposure to their books (the “we were only trying to help” defense) and that the program is “only indirectly commercial.” In fact, according to the brief, “the primary motivation for Google’s exploitation of the authors’ books is for Google to gain a competitive advantage in the online search marketplace” by increasing traffic and therefore ad revenue.

Recognizing that the “fair use doctrine is not designed to address the enormity of Google’s infringement,” the Guild argues that it’s up to Congress, not the courts, to revise copyright law to deal with technological advances. Earlier this year, the House Judiciary Committee said it would begin a review of U.S. copyright law. In the meantime, the brief says, “Google’s unilateral and profit-driven effort to upset the balance between copyright owners and users must be rejected.”