The Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on Tuesday morning that broadly affirms District Court Judge Harold Baer’s finding in October 2012 that the Hathi Trust Digital Library — created by academic libraries that participated in the Google Books Library Project — qualifies as “fair use” under copyright law. The Appeals Court upheld the two significant uses of the Hathi Trust: to allow full-text word searches across the entire database of over 10 million books, and to allow verified print-disabled patrons affiliated with a Hathi Trust member institution to access full-text versions. (Note that so far, only the […]
