Marketing News: Digital Library Program Suspended By Google

Google has announced their decision to temporarily suspend their program to build a digital library. The Google Print Library Project is an effort to make digital copies of the contents of three university libraries searchable for Internet users. In a deal made last December between Google and the libraries at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan, Google was given the right to copy all public-domain and copyrighted works in their entire collection in order to allow searching.

In response to recent discussions with publishers, Google has agreed to halt their plans to scan works still under copyright until at least November 1 in order to give publishers and other copyright holders an opportunity to opt out of having their protected works copied. However, Google does still plan to go ahead with digitizing and making searchable those works with copyrights which have expired and are considered public domain.

A publishing trade association has responded that Google’s opt-out offer is insufficient. They believe that it does not deal with their members’ belief that copyright violation serves as the foundation for the whole of the Google Print Library Project. Despite the fact that the project would only display a snippet of a protected work that results from a search and that a link would be provided in order to purchase the book if it is still in print, publishers still believe that Google is violating the copyright by making a wholesale copy of the work and storing it on the company’s computers.