Bottom of the class

The Business Section of the Daily Telegraph recently reported that The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) along with other representative bodies of illustrators, graphic artists and photographers have filed a lawsuit in New York, commencing a Class action against Google’s proposed online library, a database, containing 18 million books. There is already a similar lawsuit in the US District court for the Southern District of New York, which was commenced in 2005 by authors and publishers and which is close to a settlement agreement. The ASMP group were prevented from joining the initial Class action, but concerns that the Google database will infringe the rights of authors and artistic contributors to the books have resulted in further litigation. What are the implications for Google’s proposed project?

Ambitious

Google’s plan is ambitious, innovative and will be well received by the majority of the internet surfing public, if not by the creators of the literary works contained in the database.