| abstract
| - In December of 2004, Google announced a partnership with several major libraries to make digital copies of their collections and permit the text of the literature to be searched online by the Google search engine. Google agreed to provide its partnering libraries with a digital copy of the donor institution's collection. Under the partnership agreements, the libraries would allow Google to digitize the print books in their collections, and Google would (1) index the contents of the books; (2) display at least snippets of the books among its search results; and (3) provide partner libraries with digital copies of the print books in their collections. Google and its partners never planned to make the full text of any digitized and indexed books that are still within their terms of copyright protection available to searchers. Rather, by digitizing and indexing books, Google and its partners sought to make the contents of print books more accessible to searchers, who could potentially buy or borrow books after seeing snippets of them among the results of Google searches. Google also intended to sell advertising "keyed" to results lists incorporating the digitized books. Google's Library Project was itself part of a larger initiative initially known as Google Print and later renamed Google Book Search. The Google Partner Program was also part of this initiative. The Partner Program allowed authors and publishers to submit copies of their books for indexing in Google’s search engine. However, because rights holders affirmatively chose to have their books digitized or indexed through the Partner Program, the Program was not subject to allegations of copyright infringement like those made against the Library Project. The Library Project is described on its website: In addition, "Google Video" offers a search vehicle for material from archived television programs, educational videos, personal productions, and other video media. Users can search the closed captioning and text descriptions of its video archive for relevant results. However, in the case of both the Book Partner Program and the video program, content owners actively submit their material for inclusion in the searchable database. Only the Library Project does not seek authorization to copy from content owners. Hence, it is the only program that has been challenged in court. After some academic and commercial publishers objected to the Library Project, Google took a brief hiatus from scanning to allow publishers time to identify works that they, i.e., the copyright holders, do not want to be included in the digital database. This has been referred to an "opt out" plan. The general rule of copyright law requires a prospective user to seek permission for use; Google has reversed the process by announcing its intention to digitize entire collections of the contributing libraries unless a content owner opts out by acting to withhold permission. This contributes to the content holders’ claim that Google is engaged in massive copyright infringement.
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