[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Friday that Google’s efforts to digitize millions of books for an online library is permissible fair use. Google [corporate website] has scanned more than 20 million books since 2004 in an effort to provide people with a searchable catalog of books in all languages. The company claims it honors the copyright owners by offering purchase opportunities along with limited online access. Speaking on the decision, Gina Scigliano, a spokesperson for Google, said, “[t]oday’s decision underlines what people who use the service tell us: Google Books gives them a useful and easy way to find books they want to read and buy, while at the same time benefiting copyright holders.” The Author’s Guild [advocacy website], one of the writer organizations bringing the suit, promised to appeal, saying, “[w]e trust that the Supreme Court will see fit to correct the Second Circuit’s reduction of fair use to a one-factor test—whether the use is, in the court’s eye, ‘transformative.'” Writing for the court, Judge Pierre Leval said, “Google’s division of the page into tiny snippets is designed to show the searcher just enough context surrounding the searched term to help her evaluate whether the book falls within the scope of her interest (without revealing so much as to threaten the author’s copyright interests). … The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals.”

Subject to a four-part test [Stanford report], fair use continues to be a contentious issue in the digital age. Last month, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled [JURIST report] that copyright owners must consider “fair use” before demanding the removal of online materials. That case came about after Stephanie Lenz was ordered to remove a YouTube video of her infant son dancing to Prince’s hit “Lets Go Crazy.” Also in September, a federal trial judge invalidated [JURIST report] Warner/Chapelle Music, Inc.’s copyright to “Happy Birthday” after the discovery of new evidence that the company’s successors did not actually own the copyright. In a case similar to the one involving Google, the European Court of Justice ruled [JURIST report] in September that EU member states may authorize public libraries to digitize works contained in their collections without the consent of the rights holders.