Google in Hot Water Over Book Scanning Activity

Washington, DC – On July 2^nd, search engine giant Google was officially identified by the US Department of Justice as being a subject of an official inquiry into their ongoing book scanning and digitizing operations.

Since 2004, Google has been digitizing millions of “orphan” books into digital collections that are available for viewing and direct access from its search engine.  Orphan books are books that are out of print but are not yet in the public domain or where the books have a copyrighter that cannot be located.  Google began its venture with individual arrangements from some universities to scan their entire book collections and in return, Google would give back the information for their own reference uses.  In five years, Google quickly shaped itself into a digital repository of nearly seven million books.

Books that are in the public domain are freely available but anything that is copyrighted will be available on a snippet basis which only several pages are viewable.  Regardless of the fact that a copyrighter can object to a digitally published work by Google, the deed has already been done and laws have been violated.  On this premise, the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google in 2005 because the act of scanning and storing already violated the law and requesting removal of the work post-facto, doesn’t justify their actions.  Google was ordered to pay $45 Million to those affected in the scanning violation.  Google claimed “fair use” stating that their information was providing information free to the public meaning that the service they are providing stimulates creativity and provides the enrichment of the general public.

The latest inquiry and investigation re-opens the book on Google, taking another look at whether or not Google is exhibiting monopolistic behavior according to the Sherman Act.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1980 was enacted to limit a businesses ability to dominate a competitor in the marketplace.  According to the DOJ, Google may be infringing on other digital scanning organization’s rights to scan and publish information establishing a barrier to entry.