Three years of legal wrangling between Google and a group of publishers came to an end Tuesday, but the $125 million settlement left unresolved the question of whether Google violated the law by digitizing copyrighted material without permission from rights holders.
The two lawsuits brought by authors and publishers challenged Googleâ??s ambitious Book Search program, which has thus far digitized more than 7 million books from participating libraries. Authors and publishers had challenged Googleâ??s contention that posting â??snippetsâ? of copyrighted works online was permissible under â??fair useâ? standards, and the parties still disagree on that salient legal question.