US photographers sue Google

Bad books

Search giant Google is already facing a lot of legal aggro over its plans for Google Books, through which it is scanning thousands of books and making them available online. Not only is there antitrust concern - as there increasingly is around any Google move - but many individual authors aren't happy that they're being treated fairly.

Now US photographers have initiated their own class-action suit, having had their request to join the authors' one declined. In this suit, a bunch of individual photographers and collectives - headed-up by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) - are attacking not just the Google Library Project, but "Google's other systematic and pervasive infringements of the rights of photographers, illustrators and other visual artists."

"We strongly believe that our members and those of other organizations, whose livelihoods are significantly and negatively impacted, deserve to have representation in this landmark issue," said ASMP executive director Eugene Mopsik.

ASMP general counsel Victor Perlman added: "We are seeking justice and fair compensation for visual artists whose work appears in the twelve million books and other publications Google has illegally scanned to date. In doing so, we are giving voice to thousands of disenfranchised creators of visual artworks whose rights we hope to enforce through this class action."

Incidentally, Google lost a bit of US search market share last month, according to Hitwise, but not to Bing - rather Yahoo! and Ask. Having said that, it's still got 70 percent of the market, so no need for Google to panic yet.