Copyright thoughts for Marcel, even during NYE toast: do the flowers on his glass ... |
This is indeed what will happen.
Yesterday, Publishers Weekly announced that, in a filing with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Authors Guild gave notice that it is appealing Judge Denny Chin’s ruling before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [where incidentally Judge Chin now serves].
... infringe copyright in those on Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque champagne? |
Still according to Publishers Weekly, the appeal could be complicated by the fact that the Second Circuit is already preparing to rule on a parallel case, the Authors Guild v HathiTrust [on which see here and here].
The HathiTrust case was first brought in 2011, a few months after Judge Chin rejected the revised settlement between the Authors Guild and Google.
This case also deals with unauthorised book scanning. The Authors Guild unsuccessfully sued HathiTrust, a collective of Google's library scanning partners, claiming copyright infringement.
As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), this was "a puzzling suit to bring -- if anything, the libraries have an even stronger fair use defense than does Google."
We'll see what happens in the coming copyright-rich months ... Stay tuned and have a great New Year's Eve!
The fact that this is still unresolved after a decade of costly litigation that Google has used to exploit 20 million copyright works without permission proves that Fair Use is fair only if you are fairly rich.
ReplyDeleteFair use only allows the indexing of books and snippet views of a very small part of a book. The reason why this case dragged on was because the question over fair use was dodged for years, most of the long running argument was over the proposed settlement between the Guild and Google. And in particular whether the guild, a small group of mostly elderly authors could claim to represent all authors, including those not yet born.
ReplyDeleteOh, you must be right since you are a Second Circuit judge. I defer to your magnificent jurisplonk!
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous
ReplyDeleteIf you want to attempt to understand the very long and strange life and death of the Google Books settlement case go here http://thepublicindex.org/
days and days of fun reading
I'm pretty familiar with it, thanks. Let's wait and see whether your colleagues in the 2nd Circuit agree with you that mass-digitization of 20 million books and snippets are fair game. Should the authors take it on the Chin?
ReplyDeleteExpect the Guild will never stop trying, old tricks and old dogs stuff.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 19:58, hasn't the decision already been rendered? Google's treatment was deemed Fair Use under the four prong test. Decidedly so, in fact.
ReplyDelete