bookscanning
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Google won't face Supreme Court fight over book scanning
After many years, Google's efforts to scan out-of-print books for online searching is officially in the clear. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal over Google's victory in a legal dispute wit the Authors Guild, effectively determining once and for all that the book scanning (which focused on excerpts) represents fair use rights. The Guild had contended that Google's move violated copyright and potentially hurt profits, and would have had the internet giant pay damages.
US appeals court rules Google's book-scanning project is legal
Google's goal of scanning millions of out-of-print books for online access has drawn the ire of authors and publishers for years. Today, a US appeals court ruled that the practice is in fact legal. Claims of infringement brought by the Authors Guild and a group of writers were rejected by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The court says Google Books offers a public service by posting pieces of text online and that it doesn't encroach on laws that protect intellectual property. Instead, the practice falls under "fair use." This isn't the first time the legal system has sided with Mountain View, despite repeated attempts by authors, publishers and rival tech companies to combat the book-scanning project. Back in 2011, a $125 million settlement was rejected by a judge in New York who originally approved the deal in 2009 four years after the first lawsuit was filed. Perhaps today's ruling will be the last we hear of the Google Books saga. But then again, probably not. [Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
Book scanning gets a 1,000 fps turbo mode
No matter how fly or flashy modern scanners become, there's no getting away from their page-by-page assembly line style of operation. Or so we thought. The Ishikawa Komuro Lab at Tokyo University has demonstrated a prototype scanner capable of recording the contents of pages as they turn. Using a laser range projector to estimate page geometry, the camera adjusts for light and movement distortion as necessary and retains faithful copies of the original. At present it's more a proof of concept for the underlying vision processing unit than a commercial venture, but all it needs is one major manufacturer to pick it up and the paperless revolution can finally get started in earnest. [Via Plastic Pals]
