Google Books project face trouble in India

A group of Indian author and publishers have raised voice against Google and filed charges at the New York district court alleging copyright violation for scanning several books in Indian languages without notifying the authors.

Star Publications Pvt. Ltd., Abhinav Publications, Daya Publication House and Pustak Mahal also include in the group of publishers, who have moved court against the Google Book Settlement.

By reaching an agreement with several universities in the US, Google has been scanning millions of books under copyright protection since 2004 and thus the snippets of these books were made available online under the initiative, known as the Google Library Project.

Siddharth Arya, the legal counsel for IRRO (Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation) said, “Google’s unilateral conduct is a brazen attempt to turn copyright law on its head, by usurping the exclusive rights of the copyright holder”.

“The outcome of all of this was GBS 2.0 that incorporates minor cosmetic changes but continues to violate basic copyright laws. It retains several fundamental issues in the original settlement such as a mechanism known as ‘opt out’,” Arya said.

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