Despite being the target of two lawsuits, Google Print recently moved from its scanning text projecttothepublishing of out-of-copyright print works online.
Suits by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers appeared to first stymie the project, but Google announced that it would resume scanning materials on November 1st. The scanning project includes books that are in copyright, works that cannot be reprinted online without publisher approval, and out of copyright texts that Google is now making available online.
Working with several major universities, including Harvard and Stanford, Google is reportedly scanning all or part of these school's vast library works into the Google Print database. In keeping with the company's profile, internet users can then search the database for specific parts of a book's content or in the case of out-of-copyright materials, the entire text.
At the heart of the legal battle has been Google's approach to scanning copyrighted materials. Google is not directly seeking permission from each author to include a specific book, permission the Authors Guild insists a copyright owner must granted. Google has insisted that the database is equivalent to quoting parts of a novel for a book review and that seeking the permission of the author for such use in not necessary.
But as the company has moved forward, its first online releases are many 19th Century works of American Literature and history. Books about the US Civil War and the writings of Henry James are among the first group of online works available.
