The Financial Times (registration required) is reporting that photographers and illustrators are preparing to file a class action copyright infringement suit against Google over the images used in the publications Google has been digitizing.
“Google is scanning in books and publications with visual images, which impedes the rights of the copyright holders of those images. We are seeking compensation for that,” said James McGuire, founding partner of the New York office of law firm Mishcon de Reya, who is leading the case. … Mr McGuire said losses to photographers and illustrators were likely to be “quite substantial” although it was hard to quantify an exact figure.
Plaintiffs include the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America, the North American Nature Photography Association, and the Professional Photographers of America.
Any settlement reached by Google in the current class action suit would have no effect on this one. In addition, it may give new life to challenges to Google around the world, especially in France where Google has already lost an infringement suit.
Technically, Google is supposed to be blanking out all graphics in books involved in their Google Settlement scheme, along with sections written by someone other than the book’s author. That’s why I tell people that a Google win in this dispute won’t mean some marvelous Global Library. The books with be castrated of much useful content, they’ll be badly OCRed, and the settlement only applies to US copyrights, so their texts will only be available in the US.
But given the sheer scale of Google’s project and its do it fast and cheap approach, I’m sure quite a few graphics got missed. It is also unfair for Google to expect artists, without payment, to search through thousands of pages, locate their work, petition Google to remove the offending image, and then check to make sure that Google does that.
Of course, lawsuits involving pricey lawyers are unlikely to benefit anyone but the lawyers involved. The lawyers will be collecting perhaps $400/hour. The artists will get a pittance, and then only if there is a settlement or a win. Pursuing a legal dispute is more a matter of principles than profit. And with luck, this lawsuit may make the judge who must rule on the Google Settlement a bit more likely to say “No.” In the dispute’s latest hearing, authors opposed to the settlement outnumbered those supporting it about six to one.