Authors Guild v. Google Ruling: An Expansive View of Fair Use

[Commentary] The Supreme Court’s recent decision to deny review of the Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. ruling was a blow not just to the suit’s plaintiffs in the book industry but to all of us in the business of writing and publishing content. Here’s why: The lower court’s decision in favor of Google ruled that its project to digitize millions of books and create a searchable library did not violate the authors’ copyrights and did not require permission or monetization. In allowing this ruling to stand, the Supreme Court has created a remarkably expansive view of the Fair Use Doctrine - which is, ironically, now unfair to the content creators themselves.

The copyright law is intended to protect authors and creators, not allow another company to commercially benefit from their work. Yet, recently, the “fair use” defense, codified into law in 1976 to allow reproduction for purposes of public knowledge - such as research, criticism and reporting - has been used to the benefit of the technology companies that publish others’ valuable content on new platforms. We can’t allow technology companies to leverage and sell content - books, news stories, or other written works - on new platforms without giving the original content creator any of the benefit.

[David Chavern is the President & CEO, Newspaper Association of America]