This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
• The term “Digital Library” was coined because of the Internet and refers to an evolved new form of a library that could cover a wide range of information services.
• Digital Library is either referred as ‘library that contains material in digitized form,’ or a ‘library that contains digital material’. There were other definitions such as ‘library without walls’ or ‘library without books’.
• Copyright is a set of legal rights that an author has over his/her work for a limited period of time. Copyright covers everything from using images or sound files from the web to photocopying.
• Libraries have the right to distribute works acquired digitally pursuant to contracts, and to create but not to distribute digital archival and replacement copies.
• Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship.
Section 109 of the US Copyright law permits the owner of a lawfully made copy to dispose of it by lending or any other means. This is called the First Sale Doctrine because it permits copyright owners to control only the first sale of a work.
After that first sale, copyright owners are out of the loop when it comes to earning a share of any revenues that result from passing the book or periodical on to others. This is the basic legal foundation of the public library system.
• Digital works mostly are licensed and does not in practice pose a problem in many cases. Works which are licensed provides permission to distribute such works. For example,
a. permit limited access (ie, only registered students, faculty and staff; or only from a particular machine or machines; or only in a particular place; or only from a particular domain name or names);
b. not allow the library to keep a copy of the works when the license is terminated or expires;
c. attempt to limit users' copies and transmissions of the works;
FACTS:• Plaintiff 1: Jim Bouton, is the legal or beneficial owner
of the U.S.COPYRIGHT in the book ‘Ball Four’.
• Plaintiff 2: Betty Miles is the legal or beneficial owner of the U.S. copyright in the book ‘The Trouble with Thirteen’
• Plaintiff 3: Joseph Goulden is the legal or beneficial owner of the U.S. copyright in the book ‘The Superlawyers: The Small and Powerful World of the Great Washington Law Firms’.
• All the above books was scanned by Google and are available or search on Google's website, without plaintiffs' permission.
• In 2004, Google announced two digital books programs.
• The first, initially called "Google Print" and later renamed the "Partner Program," involved the "hosting" and display of material provided by book publishers or other rights holders. The second became known as the "Library Project," and over time it involved the digital scanning of books in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and a number of university libraries.
• Plaintiff The Authors Guild, Inc., is the nation's largest organization of published authors and it advocates for and supports the copyright and contractual interests of published writers.
• Google Inc. owns and operates the largest Internet search engine in the world. Each day, millions of people use Google's search engine free of charge; commercial and other entities pay to display ads on Google's websites and on other websites that contain Google ads.
• Plaintiffs commenced this action on September 20, 2005, alleging, that Google committed copyright infringement by scanning copyrighted books and making them available for search without the permission of the copyright holders.
• Google has defended the principal of Fair Use under § 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act. because they were only showing "snippets" for books where they did not have permission from a rights holder.
• On November 14, 2013 the case, Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. was dismissed by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan paving victory for Google and granting them the right to expand their digital library.
Justice Chin ruled that showing excerpts of books in search results falls under fair use, and that Books "advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals."