Author’s Guild accuses Google of Copyright Infringement

Search engine giant Google launched their Google Print program with much fanfare. Their aim is to make some of the biggest libraries of this world digitally indexed and provide them available for search. However, the latest news in from the media is not at all pretty. Author’s Guild Inc, an organization of more than 8,000 authors has accused Google of Copyright Infringement.

Author’s Guild Inc. claimed in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan: “The authors’ works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use.” They are asking courts to block Google from copying the books so the authors would not suffer irreparable harm by being deprived of the right to control reproduction of their works.

They also claim that their main aim is to advocate for and support the copyright and contractual interests of published writers. The lawsuit also says that Google should have known that copyright laws required it to obtain authorization from copyright owners of literary works to create and reproduce digital copies for its own commercial use.

Google in a statement said: “We regret that this group has chosen litigation to try to stop a program that will make books and the information within them more discoverable to the world.”