Welcome to the blawgosphere – and thanks – to Eoin O’Dell, a Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, blogging at cearta.ie, mainly on contract, restitution, freedom of expression, media, IT and cyber law.

He refers to the excellent recent article in the New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin on the Google Books project and the litigation it has spawned. Google’s Moon Shot – The quest for the universal library is a full and balanced account, concluding that a settlement between Google and the publishers is likely, but asking whether that will benefit the public.

In asserting its right to scan (ie copy) in-copyright works and make snippets of them available within its Book Search, Google relies on the US “fair use” exception. The publishers disagree. Google cannot wait around and is likely to settle. But, as Lawrence Lessig says:

if Google gives them anything at all, it creates a practical precedent, if not a legal precedent, that no one has the right to scan this material without their consent. That’s a win for them. The problem is that even though a settlement would be good for Google and good for the publishers, it would be bad for everyone else. … The publishers will get more than the law entitles them to, because Google needs to get this case behind it. And the settlement will create a huge barrier for any new entrants in this field.

Eoin adds the UK/Irish perspective, concluding that Google has an even greater incentive to come to an agreement with non-US (especially UK) publishers since our “fair dealing” exception is much narrower than the US “fair use”.

(Hat tip also to Slaw)