Google should pay $750 per book, says authors in copyright case

Authors suing Google for copyright infringement for  digitization of their works in Google books case have made a filing in a federal court in Southern District of New York to make an order requiring the internet giant to pay $750 per book it copied, distributed or displayed as a part of Google book project.

In its filing  president of Authors Guild, Scot Turow urged the court to rule that Google's unauthorized digitization of works does not amount to fair use. Current motion claims that Google has implemented its library project for commercial reasons to gain competitive advantage over its competitors, Microsoft and Amazon which were also digitizing books but with permission of authors.

On the contrary Google's spokesman took a stand against this view and puts that "Google library project constitutes fair use within copyright law by allowing the users to identify interesting books and find ways to borrow or buys those books and acts much like a card catalog in digital age.

 Google books project began seven years ago, where millions of books where scanned and converted into digital format after entering into agreements with libraries. Further details of project is available here.

Soon after the launch of this project, the authors across world came against it claiming copyright infringement. They claim that scanning in real sense means copying and  thus unauthorized digitization of their works by Google amounts to copyright violations.On the other hand Google always maintained its position that The Books Project amount to fair use within copyright legislation.

It was in mid 2005,  the  Authors Guild and American Association of Publishers filed a suit against Google in a Federal Court of New York to prevent them from digitizing works. The case was sooner declared to be a Class action suit.

In May 2011, a settlement package offered by Google amounting to $127 million USD was rejected by a Federal Judge.

Current motion filed by Authors guild was a  response to Google's motion on 27/7/2012 seeking dismissal of the long running case by claiming that authors have not suffered any economic harm owing to its copying and displaying of digital copies.

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