More On Publisher Concerns On Google Library Project

A New
Page in Google’s Books Fight from BusinessWeek, spotted via Search Engine Guide, covers the
scanning halt request of Google’s library digitization project we blogged earlier. However, it also touches
on other letters of concern Google’s apparently been sent, including from John Wiley & Sons and Random House. It also revisits the entire issue of whether its a copyright
violation to do the digitization. “There’s nothing that gives Google the right to make this copy” says Laura Gasaway, an intellectual property expert and law professor at the
University of North Carolina, the story writes. Indeed, there’s nothing that gives Google or other search engines the right to make copies of copyrighted works already on the
web. Nevertheless, they have done so for the past 10 years — and I’m convinced that’s ultimately going to be a factor in all this. My earlier post
Forget Google Print Copyright Infringement; Search Engines Already Infringe covers that in more depth.