Authors Guild to sue Google

Google is to be sued over its controversial library digitisation program. The Authors Guild, a writers advocate agency in the US has filed a class action with the federal court of Manhattan calling for an end to the digitisation of library books by the search engine giant.

"This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law," said Nick Taylor, the president of the Authors Guild. The class action alleges that Google is engaging in large scale copyright infringement.

"It's not up to Google or anyone other than authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied," Taylor said.

The class action also includes a number of authors, including Daniel Hoffman, whose titles on literary criticism and poetry are published by Oxford University Press. Mr Hoffman was the US poet laureate in 1973.

Taylor said the Authors Guild is using the class action to seek damages for authors and an injunction to halt any further digitisation.

Susan Wojiciki, vp product management at Google said on the Google blog that it regrets the class action to sue "over a program that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world." Clarifying Google's position on copyright she said: "Let's be clear: Google doesn't show even a single page to users who find copyrighted books through this program (unless the copyright holder gives us permission to show more). At most we show only a brief snippet of text where their search term appears, along with basic bibliographic information and several links to online booksellers and libraries."

Since announcing the digitisation program in January 2005 Google has attracted a great deal of criticism. Five world leading libraries are part of program, including Oxford University Bodleian, Stanford, Michigan, Havard and the New York Public Library. Google has put the program on hold and has said that copyright holders can withdraw books.