Google Books project ruled legal by U.S. appeals court

A decade-long legal battle looks to be finally coming to an end.

A U.S. appeals court said Friday that Google's book scanning project, Google Books, doesn't violate copyright law, Reuters reports. The decision comes after the Authors Guild, along with some non-guild-affiliated writers sued Google in 2005, claiming the company's project would negatively impact their revenue.

Google officially began its ambitious, controversial project to scan every book in the world in October 2004, working with libraries and universities to scan their entire collections. The company only provided the full text of books in the public domain, with only excerpts of copyrighted works available for free public viewing Read more...