US court backs Google book-scanning project

Image copyrightGetty Images

Google can continue to scan millions of books for an online library without violating copyright laws, the US court of appeal ruled on Friday.

The court rejected claims from a group of authors that Google Books violated their intellectual property rights.

Judges sided with an earlier ruling that the digital library was "fair use" and provided a public service.

Authors Guild executive director Mary Rasenberger said the decision was disappointing.

The Authors Guild and some individual writers filed the lawsuit in 2005, claiming the project infringed on copyright protection and authors' ability to make money from their work.

Google Books is a project to scan and digitise millions of books to allow users to search and read excerpts from them.

Judge Pierre Leval wrote: "Google's division of the page into tiny snippets is designed to show the searcher just enough context surrounding the searched term to help her evaluate whether the book falls within the scope of her interest (without revealing so much as to threaten the author's copyright interests)."

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionGoogle co-founder Larry Page

Google said it would have faced billions of dollars in damages claims from authors if it had lost the case.

The company argued that Books could help authors by exposing portions of their work to potential buyers.

"We're pleased the court has confirmed that the project is fair use, acting like a card catalogue for the digital age," a Google spokesperson said.

The Authors Guild plans to appeal to the US Supreme Court.

"We are very disheartened that the court was unable to understand the grave impact that this decision, if left standing, could have on copyright incentives and, ultimately, our literary heritage," Ms Rasenberger said.

VW ordered to recall 2.4 million cars in Germany

Volkswagen has been ordered to recall 2.4 million cars in Germany by the country's automotive watchdog as a result of the diesel emissions scandal.

German media reports suggest the KBA earlier rejected VW's proposals that car owners could voluntarily bring their cars in for repair.

Meanwhile, Italian police have raided VW offices in Verona and Lamborghini offices in Bologna.

Reports suggest Italian prosecutors are investigating alleged commercial fraud.

Separately, the man tipped to become VW's North America boss has resigned.

The company said Winfried Vahland was leaving because of "differing views on the organisation of the new group region".

Last month, authorities in the US discovered some VW diesel cars had been fitted with a device to cheat emissions tests. The carmaker subsequently admitted that up to 11 million cars worldwide could have the device fitted.

The company has launched a thorough investigation into the scandal, but new chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch has warned that answers would take "some time".

VW has set aside €6.5bn ($7.4bn; £4.8bn) to cover the costs of the scandal, but some experts believe the final bill could be much higher.

Shares in the company recovered slightly last week but are still down almost 20% since the scandal broke in the middle of September.

Netflix adds 3.6m subscribers between July and September

Online TV company Netflix gained another 3.62m subscribers between July and September, to take its total to 69.17m.

However, the number of new subscribers in the US was less than the company had forecast, prompting shares to fall in after-hours trading.

It attributed this to the "ongoing transition to chip-based credit and debit cards".

The firm said revenue rose to $1.74bn (£1.1bn) from $1.41bn a year earlier.

In the US it had predicted an extra 1.15m subscribers in the third quarter, but in fact saw just 880,000 new additions.

In an interview to discuss the results, the chief financial officer David Wells said the move to new chip and pin devices often meant that customers had to re-enter their details.

"There may be other things going on here but certainly the transition is not helping," he said.

Barton Crockett, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets said: "The slowdown in US subscriber growth was particularly disappointing because one would expect that since Netflix just raised rates last week, this number would have been strong."

Mainstream

Internationally, the company added more subscribers than it had predicted, 2.74m compared with a forecast of 2.4m. It has recently launched in Spain, Italy and Portugal and plans to expand into South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in early 2016.

"It is clear that Internet TV is becoming increasingly mainstream and traditional media companies are adjusting to the shift from linear to on-demand viewing," the company said in its letter to shareholders.

Last week Netflix, which makes programmes such as House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, increased prices in several countries, including the US, in order to "improve our ability to acquire and offer high quality content".

It also decided not renew a contract with the distributor Epix, meaning that thousands of films, such as the Hunger Games and Transformers, will be removed from its site. The company said this was because most of the content was not exclusive and often only available in the US.

It said that so far it had seen "no material reduction in US feature film viewing".