Authors Guild v. Google goes to the Supreme Court
…the Second Circuit effectively deprived artists not only of their moral and legal right to be paid for their work, but also deprived authors of their legal right to control where their work is reproduced and by whom.
The final chapter in the decade-long struggle by the Authors Guild to seek full rights protection for all writers came to a head on Feb. 1, 2016, when the Authors Guild submitted a petition to the Supreme Court, asking it to review the Second Circuit court’s ruling this past November in favor of the Google book scanning project.
In deciding that the Google project constituted “fair use”, not infringement, the Second Circuit effectively deprived artists not only of their moral and legal right to be paid for their work, but also deprived authors of their legal right to control where their work is reproduced and by whom.
“Authors and dramatists adding their names to a friend-of-the-Court brief filed in Washington, DC include Stephen Sondheim, Margaret Atwood, Tony Kushner, J.M. Coetzee, Malcolm Gladwell, Douglas Wright, Michael Frayn, Marsha Norman, and Yann Martel. Major publishers Elsevier and Hachette were among those filing a separate brief, while other briefs came from the Copyright Alliance and the Copyright Clearance Center, among others. All were filed by a February 1 deadline dictated by the Court.”
~Bestselling Authors and Rights Organizations Support Authors Guild in Asking Supreme Court to Review Authors Guild v. Google Ruling
Why is writing considered to be “free”?
‘President Roxana Robinson confronted what she termed “an increasing sense in the public consciousness that writing should be free” in an interview with Jim Zirin for his television program Conversations in the Digital Age.’
~Guild Hits the Road to Push 2016 Advocacy Agenda