The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Ecrivaines et des Ecrivains Quebecois (UNEQ) and eight individual authors recently filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court against HathiTrust and five universities. These include the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Cornell University. Plaintiff authors include children's book author and illustrator Pat Cummings, novelists Angelo Loukakis, Roxana Robinson, Daniele Simpson and Fay Weldon, poet Andre Roy, Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning biographer T.J. Stiles.
The universities obtained from Google unauthorised scans of an estimated 7 million copyright-protected books, the rights to which are held by authors in dozens of countries. The universities have pooled the unauthorised files in a repository organised by the University of Michigan called HathiTrust. In June, Michigan announced plans to permit unlimited downloads by its students and faculty members of copyright-protected works it deems 'orphans' according to rules the school has established. Other universities joined in Michigan's project in August.
The plaintiffs point out that the American universities do not have the authority to decide whether, when or how authors forfeit their copyright protection. They further say authors from the other parts of the world may not even know that their works have been determined to be 'orphans' by an American group. The complaint also questions the security of the 7 million unauthorised digital files.
The first set of so-called orphans, 27 works by French, Russian and American authors, is scheduled to be released to an estimated 250,000 students and faculty members on October 13, 2011. An additional 140 books, including works in Spanish, Yiddish, French and Russian, are to be released starting in November.
Google's library scanning project is already the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit in New York. A status conference in that case is scheduled before Judge Denny Chin on September 15.
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