ACRL joins LCA colleagues and EFF to file Amicus in support of Google Book Search

On August 1, 2012, members of the Library Copyright Alliance (the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries and Association of College and Research Libraries), together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a friend of the court brief in Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., a lawsuit in which authors allege that Google violated copyright by scanning books to create Google Book Search, a search tool similar to its Internet search engine. The LCA/EFF brief defends GBS as permissible under the doctrine of fair use, a flexible right that allows copying without payment or permission where the public benefit strongly outweighs the harm to individual rightsholders