Google Revs up its scanners

2 Nov 2005

Google Print is revving up its scanners once again, vowing to churn through more books from the Stanford University and University of Michigan collections. Google imposed a moratorium on the scanning project in August, but threatened to resume scanning by the start of November - yesterday.

While Google has struck agreements with five libraries in all, it doesn't have the explicit agreement of the copyright holders themselves: the publishers and authors, who are invited to opt-out of the process rather than opt-in. Google maintains its scanning operation falls under legitimate fair use, because it is only making small portions of the books that appear in search results publicly available.

Since the August moratorium, Google has received two writs requesting the project be halted. In September, the Authors Guild along with former poet laureate Daniel Hoffman and two other authors filed suit requesting the project be stopped. Ten days ago, the Association of American Publishers, along with five leading US publishers, also sued to halt the project.

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