google_logoIt looks like the victory racked up by Google in a book-scanning case happens to be a major win when it comes to fair use. An appeals court ruled that Google’s book-scanning project would eventually end up serving a public purpose – hence it should not stop and be given the green light to continue. This decisive victory was picked up last Friday in a copyright-infringement case, in which the Authors Guild launched close to 10 years back. A federal appeals court ruled that the effort which has seen millions of books transformed into searchable digital files, would be fully covered under the “fair use” clause where copyright law is concerned.

Copyright law is a quagmire that not many would want to wade through since it can be extremely challenging to pin down even in the best of times, so interpreting the concept of fair use is all the more tough when you think about it. After all, what makes up the qualities of fair use? Theoretically speaking, for anyone to make use of copyrighted content without having to get permission from the creator or rights-holder is not written in stone in the federal copyright law, and the judges in court would have a challenging time before arriving at a decision.

It was ruled that the purpose of the copyright law is to ensure that people are driven to be more creative, as such artistic works end up benefitting society. Hence, the Google Books project would come with a far greater social benefit compared to the infringement aspect.

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