Educational publishers file lawsuit against Google

In the US, several educational publishers have filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that it violates the Copyright Act and supports piracy, reports Publishing Perspectives.

Plaintiffs Elsevier, Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning and McGraw Hill are seeking to address what they call ‘Google’s systemic and pervasive advertising of unauthorised, infringing copies’ of textbooks, alleging that they have ‘reported infringement after infringement to Google, only to have those reports ignored’ and that Google has ‘continued to advertise infringing works while simultaneously restricting ads for authentic educational works—supporting piracy instead of legitimacy’.

The educational publishing plaintiffs filed a 46-page complaint with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on 5 June and stated that Google’s handling of infringement notices has been ‘a circus of failures’.

The plaintiffs claim that Google’s practices ‘harm consumers, who are directed to illegal, inferior products [and] likewise harms the publishers, whose sales decrease, while the pirates’ sales increase’.

Category: International news