Google Respects Copyright. Yeah Sure! Tell It to YouTube!

The Authors Guild, an organization that fights for authors' rights, sued Google for copyright infringement after certain books were published on the search giant's Book Search technology. The Mountain View company tries to defend itself by sustaining that the company is not infringing copyright and more than that it respects authors' rights. According to Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management, all the publishers have the possibility to demand the removal of the books as soon as they found any copyright infringement sign.

"We regret that this group chose to sue us over a program that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world -- especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program," the Google official sustained. "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)," she continued.

As you might know, the book search technology provides instant access to millions of digitized books, providing details about the author, the creation and several methods to buy or borrow the books. Obviously, Google is also showing some pages from the book but just as a preview, most of them being selected by the authors or by the owners of the rights.

"Google respects copyright. The use we make of all the books we scan through the Library Project is fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under U.S. copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews," Susan Wojcicki added.

However, this is not the first time when Google is involved in copyright issues because the search giant was sent to the court for an impressive number of times when other companies accused it for publishing videos on YouTube without authorization. The last and the most famous lawsuits were filed by Viacom, the owner of MTV and Comedy Central that sued Google for copyright infringement, requiring $1 billion in damages.