Since its announcement, Google’s digital library initiative has polarized both consumers and copyright holders.

On first view, Google’s plan to scan books and make them available through their search engines appears to violate copyrights on these books, and many large publishers have geared for a fight with the search giant. However, at closer inspection, Google only plans to allow searching within these texts and does not plan to make full text or even large sections available to users. This, likely, falls under the terms of fair use.

InternetWeek’s Christopher Heun takes an unbiased and thorough look at the legal hurdles behind the Google Print Library Project in a new article.

A court will generally look at the “character” of the company’s activities, “its adverse economic impact on the copyright holder, and the amount of material it uses in proportion to the whole and if that is key to the work.” Google announced plans for its consumer offering will be the ability to search through the full text of the scanned titles. If a work is copyrighted, Google plans to only provide a few sentences surrounding the search term. For works with expired copyrights, the full text will be available.

Publishers argue that even with this limited viewing of their texts that Google will profit from displaying advertisements on the limited results, thus making the usage commercial. The problem with this argument is that the fair use doctrine only partially considers commercial usage. If Google displays three to five sentences or even a whole paragraph out of 200 page book, this is likely such a small percentage of the total work that any usage will be allowed.

One issue that publishers have yet to quote in their defense is the ability for someone to offer an application that uses smart searching for phrases within these limited results to return the full text of the book. For instance, if you display the first paragraph in the book and can simply search for the exact ten word phrase/sentence at the end of the provided text, multiple iterations could return the entire book. In this example, Google would still only be providing limited usage and a third party add-on or site might be using this offering, perhaps against Google’s terms, to offer full books, which would hurt the publishers’ businesses. Who, if anyone, would be liable is a question for the lawyers.

While not mentioned in the InternetWeek article, publishers may have an ulterior motive in opposing Google’s library project. Many large publishers make millions of dollars every year from issuing single editions and compilations of books with expired copyrights. English literature classes (e.g. Shakespeare) alone provide substantial revenue from this segment.

Publishers have made little noise against the ebook editions that have been available for years, as a lack of standards and availability have not made these viable options for many schools. However, any offering from Google will provide a ready alternative source for these many of these “free” titles.

As authors ourselves, The Technology Suits strongly supports the rights of copyright holders to be compensated for their creations. We also believe in taking an unbiased view on new technologies such as the Google Print Library Project. There are obviously pluses and minuses to new technologies and their ability to make content more readily available. It is important that creators of content stay up to date with these to protect their creations, expand their audience and receive proper compensation.