CBC News | November 9, 2009
A backgrounder on Google’s project to digitize all the world’s books.
The Google Books settlement with U.S. writers and publishers, now scheduled for release Nov. 13, is the result of a four-year tussle over the question of whether the company has the right to digitize millions of books, both those in print and those out of print.
Google began its digitizing project in 2005, going to several major university libraries and digitizing every book it found there. The company said its aim is to increase the amount of knowledge available online. But the Authors Guild of America accused the company of “massive copyright infringement” and began a class-action lawsuit against it. Publishers later joined in. That class action has resulted in Google displaying only snippets of books not yet in the public domain.
