Proposed Google Book Search Raises Copyright Concerns

25 May 2005

Proposed Google Book Search Raises Copyright Concerns

Search engine giant Google is proposing to introduce a new book search service that would provide
the text of library books for users. The project Google Print, was mooted last year and would see
the text of millions of books scanned onto a database for reference by Google clients, however
publishers have spurned the idea and accused the search engine of Copyright infringement “on a
massive scale”.

The Association of American University Presses, that represents the US publishers of academic
journals and scholastic texts, voiced its concerns over the potential diminished sales that could
affect the publishers. In a recent correspondence to Google, the association was reported to have
stated that the print program “appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a
massive scale”.

In the aforesaid letter Peter Givler, executive director of the Association of American University
Presses, posed 16 questions to Google in order to ascertain the means in which the project was to
be executed. Moreover Givler claimed that requests for Google to refrain from scanning the
copyrighted material by the publishers, has been ignored.

Along side Google there are five major US libraries in the project, namely Harvard, Stanford, the
University of Michigan, the University of Oxford and The New York Public Library.

In response to the claims of copyright infringement, Google has defended the project by stating
that it will offer copyright protection for the authors and publishers of the texts. According to
Google the featured texts will be books that are out of copyright, however where copyright
subsists in a given text, the only information that will be provided will be bibliographic along
side a few sentences of text.

In a statement issued by Google on Monday, the search firm stated:

“Although we believe there are many business advantages for publishers to participate in Google
Print, they may opt out, and their books scanned in libraries will not be displayed to Google
users. We continue to maintain an active dialogue with all of our publishing partners
participating in Google Print and we encourage any publishers to contact us directly with their
questions and comments.”

Dan Head