Web Giants to Fight Google’s Copyright Settlement with Authors Guild
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Related subjects: Art & Culture, Books & Authors, I.T., In the Loop, J.E. Robertson, Judicial Rulings, L'accés: Society of Access, Media, Net Neutrality, Press Freedom, Science & Technology, U.S. Economy, U.S. Law, U.S. news Comments (2)
The Internet Archive is joining with major internet-related firms, such as Yahoo and Amazon, to fight Google’s settlement with the Authors’ Guild, allowing Google Books to publish copyright-protected materials online, if they are out of print, and to compensate authors according to the sales generated by the display of the copyrighted text (possibly 70% going to publishers or copyright holders, including a cut of ad revenues). The Coalition plans to fight the legal settlement on anti-trust grounds.
Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo are joining with a few library associations to oppose the settlement, Peter Brantley, the Internet Archive’s director, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. The coalition, which is expected to be announced in a couple of weeks, will be co-led by antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Brantley said.
The settlement treated authors as a class in a class action suit to prevent the unauthorized use of their material by Google, and was reached by the Authors’ Guild. It should be the case that only those authors represented by the Guild —some 8,000— are part of the pertinent class, but publishers and some Google competitors argue the settlement flies in the face of copyright law and gives Google far too much control over textual content online.
Google has also reached settlement with the Association of American Publishers, and would take 30% royalties from any revenues generated by its Google Books search site. Some authors view the process as a threat to their own control of their material, while the Authors’ Guild and the AAP view the settlement as an opportunity to make sure they 1) set a precedent for payment and 2) expand the basic revenue stream they can access via online media.
TG Daily reports:
Hundreds of writers, the National Writers Union, libraries and a group of professors from the University of California have already expressed concern over the deal, mainly in terms of the freedom Google would have to set prices and fears over whether Google would protect the privacy of users.
According to Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, Google’s intent is nothing less than to dominate or replace the entire library system in the US. “If this deal goes ahead, they’re making a real shot at being ‘the’ library and the only library”, he has told the BBC. The BBC reports that “Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923.”
Meanwhile, the US Dept. of Justice has opened an investigation into the potential anti-trust issues the settlement could raise. Kahle warns that “The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways — all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach.” Opponents fear Google’s control of so much textual material will lead to a profit-driven standard for access to most books, sidelining the system of free libraries and tradeable hard-copies in print.
The coalition announcement comes at a crucial time: in April, a judge ruled that authors should have four more months to decide whether they wanted to opt out of the Google Books settlement with the Authors’ Guild. The deadline for that process is now approaching —4 September 2009—, and Google is preparing to take full advantage of its rights under the settlement. A final hearing on the fairness of the agreement is scheduled for 7 October, and it will likely be there that the coalition first brings serious weight to bear on the process.
- NOTE: Cafe Sentido’s publisher, Casavaria, has agreed, on a case by case basis, to permit Google Books to show a “limited preview” of books it currently has in print and which are available for purchase. These are promotional agreements, aimed at driving online sales of the print book itself, and are not the same sort of online publishing involved in the Authors’ Guild case.
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[...] owned and controlled textual content… or it may help bring it into being. So, there is an effort to prevent Google’s gaining too vast an influence over textual content. The web, we know, operates on the principle that content is free, and netizens are passionate and [...]
[...] owned and controlled textual content… or it may help bring it into being. So, there is an effort to prevent Google’s gaining too vast an influence over textual content. The web, we know, operates on the principle that content is free, and netizens are passionate and [...]