Read the original filing by the Writer's Guild as well as the announcement by the Writer's Guild of a deal worked between Google and the Writer's Guild. Specifically in the lawsuit, the guild conceded the only full text works were ones outside of copyright protection, that the case was about what Google might do in the future, and that they themselves violated copyright by making full copies in their servers which could then be searched.
It was a lawsuit designed to lose, as both parties simply wanted the lawsuit there to have a court approved settlement which would force all authors to participate in the Writer's Guild settlement and act as their sole future agent for any and all monies derived from the works, especially after a considerable amount was taken for their own operations.
Unfortunately, since it included publishing rights in both electronic and physical format, it also violated three other agreements that the Guild had already made, and of course the other parties objected (as well as a number of authors who wanted nothing to do with the Writer's Guild) and the agreement was not approved and the case rolled on.
Everything Google has done is well within existing case law, none of the rulings changed any existing case law, and hence why SCOTUS simply upheld previous rulings. Next stop is Europe where the party begins again.
thank you for explaining that more fully- I didn’t realize they ruled based on case law already on the books- It looks like perhaps the writers were screwed over by the writers guild by forcing all writers to participate in the action/suit-
But i don’t understand how existing case law made it ok to post full works online in the first place- against the wishes of the authors if they should object-
If this is truly the case, then websites really have no right objecting to people copying and pasting whole articles online
[[The 2013 decision found that the scanning of books (provided for that purpose by libraries) was not a violation of copyright, owing to its being “transformative” — in a technical sense. The books were not simply being resold or the like,]]
From the case article:
One could say that copying website material and posting elsewhere is ‘transformative’ - in a technical sense’ it would seem- if a link is provided to the original website, then one could say it is not ‘providing a substitute for the original work’ technically speaking (however, obviously, copying and pasting another’s work, and not giving credit, or claiming it as one’s own would violate the copyrite, and be guilty of plagiarism)
Meh- My not being a lawyer it’s hard to comment not knowing all the facts- It just seemed odd that case law would allow something like that- I understand that works no longer protected under copyrite could technically be posted (although I think there’s even some guidelines/restrictions htere too if I’m not mistaken) but actual copyrite material seems a bit odd-