Google Resumes Scans

Google resumed its controversial book-scanning initiative on Tuesday, despite the objections of several publishers and two pending copyright-infringement lawsuits.

The initiative, “Google Print,” is a multi-year project to digitalize the contents of five of the world’s largest research libraries, including Harvard’s.

Stanford, the University of Michigan, Oxford, and the New York Public Library have also partnered with Google on the effort.

In August, Google temporarily halted the scanning of works that are under copyright protection but said that scanning would resume on Nov. 1.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that scanning would resume soon at Stanford and the Michigan, both of whose collections will be entirely digitalized. Google never halted the scanning at Harvard, as none of the books that the University is sharing are under copyright protection. Likewise, the books provided by Oxford and the New York Public Library are exclusively in the public domain.

In the past week, Google has activated a searchable database of its first 10,000 digitized books—none of which are under copyright protection. Some of the works from the Harvard collection included in this first release are volumes by Henry James, Edith Wharton, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Margaret Fuller.

The resumption this week of scanning in-copyright materials has intensified uproar over the initiative. The Authors Guild, which represents more than 8,000 writers, filed suit to stop Google Print in September, and the Association of American Publishers, which includes more than 300 publishing houses, filed a separate but similar lawsuit in October.

Although there has been no further progress on either of the lawsuits, Harvard spokesman John Longbrake wrote in an e-mail that the University believes that “Google’s treatment of in-copyright works is consistent with copyright law.”

Google had previously announced that it would allow publishers to remove their books from the project. But Google stipulated that the publishers would have to submit the name of each book that they wanted to remove.

Trade groups reacted angrily to this proposal, saying that it was Google’s duty to secure permission for copyrighted works, not the publishers’ responsibility to opt out of the project.

Google said that the print initiative is a logical extension of its mission, which—according to the search engine’s website—is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

“Any researcher or student, whether they’re in New York or New Delhi, can now research and learn from these books,” Google Vice President for Product Management Susan Wojcicki told The Crimson through a spokesman. Wojcicki told The Wall Street Journal that some copyrighted works might be made available by mistake. But she added that her company would be focusing, in the short term, on works that are out of print. Eventually, she said, Google would scan all books—including those under copyright protection—but that it “would never show a full page [of text] without the right from a copyright holder.”

During the pilot phase of the project, which is nearly complete, Harvard allowed Google to scan only 40,000 books from its collections. However, Longbrake wrote that Harvard is “encouraged by the positive results to date” and that it is “in active discussions concerning a long-term agreement with Google.”