Call for signatories: Digital Humanities Amicus in Authors Guild v. Google

Matthew Jockers, Jason Schultz and I have written an amicus brief in the upcoming Court of Appeals round of Authors Guild v. Google, Inc.

Download the draft here: DH Amicus AG v Google CA2

Background

Since we started working on this project just over two years ago two district courts and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit have rejected the Authors Guild’s attacks on library digitization and the legality of text-mining. We are confident that the Second Circuit will uphold Judge Chin’s decision last year where he rejected (on a motion for summary judgement)  the Authors Guild’s copyright infringement claim against Google over its Google Book Search product.  The rulings in Authors Guild v. Google and the parallel case of Authors Guild v. Hathitrust are a critical moment in the fight to define fair use for the Digital Humanities.In Authors Guild v. Google, Judge Chin expressly based ruling in part on the fact that

“Google Books … has transformed book text into data for purposes of substantive research, including data mining and text mining in new areas, thereby opening up new fields of research. Words in books are being used in a way they have not been used before. Google Books has created something new in the use of book text — the frequency of words and trends in their usage provide substantive information.”
In his decision, Judge Chin cites the Brief of Digital Humanities and Law Scholars as Amici Curiae that we submitted on behalf of more than 100 researchers and scholars last year. Chin wrote that
“Google Books permits humanities scholars to analyze massive amounts of data — the literary record created by a collection of tens of millions of books.”

The Authors Guild is now appealing Judge Chin’s decision (on this and other grounds).  A different panel of that same court has already upheld the decision in Authors Guild v. Hathitrust. We believe that these cases will have a dramatic effect on research in computer science to linguistics, history, literature and the digital humanities.

Argument in a nutshell

According to the U.S. Constitution, the purpose of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. Copyright law should not be an obstacle to statistical and computational analysis of the millions of books owned by university libraries. Copyright law has long recognized the distinction between protecting an author’s original expression and the public’s right to access the facts and ideas contained within that expression. That distinction must be maintained in the digital age so that library digitization, internet search and related non-expressive uses of written works remain legal.

What can you do?

If you are a legal academic or student, academic or researcher who would be effected by this issue, you can help preserve the balance of copyright law by joining our brief as a signatory (we need your name and affiliation e.g. Associate Professor, Jane Doe, Springfield University).

Does this concern you?

If you are still reading this post, the answer is probably YES.  We are collecting signatures from a wide range of fields, including computer science, englishhistory, law, linguistics and philosophy. We need your name etc., by July 9, 2014. Please enter your details directly via this online tool:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QSA_fUSaRpw47wwRcXh0SXkZFx1NQ2NbjhBbfTrICnA/viewform?usp=send_formPlease feel free to share this invitation with other interested academics and Phd students.

Thank you!

Matthew Jockers explains why you can’t read a book through snippets

The Authors Guild’s war on search engines, text-mining and academic research is in its final throws. Over the last two years two different US Federal District Courts have held that library digitization for the purpose of building a search index and running a search engine is fair use. See, Authors Guild v. Hathitrust 902 F. Supp. 2d 445 (S.D.N.Y. 2012) and Authors Guild v. Google 954 F. Supp. 2d 282 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). The Hathitrust decision was upheld on appeal on June 10 this year (Authors Guild v. Hathitrust, 2nd Circuit 2014) and the parties and interested amici are gearing up for a final showdown in the appeal of Authors Guild v. Google.

In the Guild’s latest legal salvo it argues – by repeated assertion – that the text snippets Google displays to users allow 78% of the contents of any book to be reconstructed. (e.g., at p.10 “The scanning process resulted in an index that contains the complete text of all the books copied in the Library Project.”)

My sometime co-author and accomplished Digital Humanities researcher, Matthew Jockers, tested out the Guild’s claims on his own book and … it turns out that you can’t read a book through snippets, unless you already have the book, and that even then it takes about 30 minutes to trick the search engine into giving you the next 100 words beyond the free-view.

As Matt explains:

“Reading 78% of my book online, as the Guild asserts, requires that the reader anticipate what words will appear in the concealed sections of the book.”

He concludes

“Well, this certainly is reading Macroanalysis the hard way. I’ve now spent 30 minutes to gain access to exactly 100 words beyond what was offered in the initial preview. And, of course, my method involved having access to the full text! Without the full text, I don’t think such a process of searching and reading is possible, and if it is possible, it is certainly not feasible!

But let’s assume that a super savvy text pirate, with extensive training in English language syntax could guess the right words to search and then perform at least as well as I did using a full text version of my book as a crutch. My book contains, roughly, 80,000 words. Not counting the ~5k offered in the preview, that leaves 75,000 words to steal. At a rate of 200 words per hour, it would take this super savvy text pirate 375 hours to reconstruct my book. That’s about 47 days of full-time, eight-hour work.”

Matt’s book is Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History and — as seen on the screen shot I just made of Google Books — you can buy the eBook version, linked to from the Google Books web page, for $14.95.

Screen Shot 2014-06-19 at 11.48.07 AM

 

 

Authors Guild v. HathiTrust — Libraries 3 : Authors Guild 0

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the most important parts of the District Court decision in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust. Here is a link to the decision –AGvHathiTrust_CA2_2013.

Along with the district decision in this case and the one in Authors Guild v. Google, this makes the current score, Libraries 3 : Authors Guild 0

The decision confirms that library digitization (as performed by Google in conjunction with the University of Michigan, University of Illinois and many others) does not infringe copyright if it is done for the purpose of allowing blind and visually disabled people to read books. 

Access to the PrintDisabled
The HDL also provides print‐disabled patrons with versions of all of the works contained in its digital archive in formats accessible to them. In order to obtain access to the works, a patron must submit documentation from a qualified expert verifying that the disability prevents him or her from reading printed materials, and the patron must be affiliated with an HDL member that has opted‐into the program. Currently, the University of Michigan is the only HDL member institution that has opted‐in. We conclude that  this use is also protected by the doctrine of fair use.

The decision confirms that library digitization does not infringe copyright if it is done for the purpose  of text-mining or creating a search engine. This is core of the non-expressive use argument that Matthew Jockers, Jason Schultz and I made in the Digital Humanities Amicus Brief  (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2274832). That brief was joined by over 100 professors and scholars who teach, write, and research in computer science, the digital humanities, linguistics or law, and two associations that represent Digital Humanities scholars generally.

The crux of our argument was that mass digitization of books for text-mining purposes is a form of incidental or “intermediate” copying that enables ultimately non-expressive, non-infringing, and socially beneficial uses without unduly treading on any expressive—i.e., legally cognizable—uses of the works. The Court of Appeals appears to have agreed.

FullText Search
It is not disputed that, in order to perform a full‐text search of books, the Libraries must first create digital copies of the entire books. Importantly, as we have seen, the HDL does not allow users to view any portion of the books they are searching. Consequently,  in providing this service, the HDL does not add into circulation any new, human‐readable copies of any books. Instead, the HDL simply permits users to “word search”—that is, to locate where specific  words or phrases appear in the digitized books. Applying the relevant factors, we conclude that this use is a fair use.

The Court left itself some room to maneuver if it turns out that, for reason, digitization for non-expressive uses like text mining causes unforeseen harm in different circumstances. For example, a digitization project that did not bother with any kind of security might not be fair use.

Without foreclosing a future claim based on circumstances not  now predictable, and based on a different record, we hold that the  balance of relevant factors in this case favors the Libraries. In sum,  we conclude that the doctrine of fair use allows the Libraries to  digitize copyrighted works for the purpose of permitting full‐text  searches.

With that appropriate caveat, this is a great win for for humanity and the Digital Humanities respectively.

I am proud to have played my small part in this case over the years.