Just over three years ago the Authors Guild and then the AAP and a group of five publishers filed lawsuits against Google over their library book-scanning project based on the principal that it constituted copyright infringement. Now with all the parties finding different ways of declaring their settlement agreement “historic,” principal has been sufficiently resolved to give way to hopes of commerce and accessibility. Google gets a pathway to a virtual monopoly for an online library of books in the US, and all parties leave the legal issues regarding fair use and orphan works sufficiently unresolved so as to discourage […]
