Google Sued by Authors Guild for Copyright Infringement in Scanning Books Online   9/20/2005 - 929 views,

The Authors Guild, and authors Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles, and Daniel Hoffman are all named as plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit.

Exclaimed Authors Guild president, Nick Taylor, “This is a plain and brazen violation of copyright law. It’s not up to Google or anyone other than the authors, the rightful owners of these copyrights, to decide whether and how their works will be copied.”

Google maintains that because online searchers can only access a tiny snippet of a given online book at any one time, and can never aggregate more than 20% of any online book content, even through numerous searches, that it is fair use, and not copyright infringement.

Herbert Mitgang is a former New York Times editorial writer and the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books, including “The Fiery Trial: A Life of Lincoln”. Betty Miles is the author of many works for children and young adults, and the co-author of “Just Think”, and Daniel Hoffman is the author and editor of many volumes of poetry, translation, and literary criticism, including “Barbarous Knowledge: Myth in the Poetry of Yeats, Graves and Muir” and “Striking the Stones”. In addition Daniel Hoffman was the 1973-74 Poet Laureate of the United States.