Has anybody thought of fighting against a giant? I found this article about a lawsuit between Google, the giant search engine and the author guild. The author guild defines themselves as a non-profit American organization of and for authors. They have about 80 thousand members who are in the book publishing industry including published authors, literary agents and attorneys. Their conflict with Google started on September 20, 2005 when they filed a lawsuit against Google for its Book Search Project. The Author Guild claimed that Google was committing copyright infringement. The main cause of the litigation was distribution of scanned books that were still in copyright on Google search engine. On the other hand, Google responded that they had fair use of the materials according to the US copyright law. On October 28, 2008, the legal dispute was settled by Google's announce of payout agreement of $125 million to the organization.
Recently, Google is involved in another lawsuit with NY library and they sensed the Author Guild's movement. Google wants the organization stay out of this case. Additionally, they urged a judge keep the group out of the case. Their action is, in fact, forcing authors and photographers to individually fight the online search engine giant.
While I was reading the article and informed myself about these cases, I could not decide which side I should stand for. As a consumer of the book publishing industry, I am siding with Google in terms of distributing scanned copies of books. However, at the end of the day, it will hit the industry. The important part is keeping the balance. Nowadays, consumers have access to either free or low priced published contents. Therefore, the book publishing companies should come up with creative ways to maintain competitiveness.
Any other thoughts?
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