Google's online library is stopped by copywrite issues

Here are several stories...

"Google books agreement torpedoed by US court"

March 22nd, 2011

BBC NEWS

An agreement between Google and publishers over the web firm's publication of books online has been blocked by a US court.

The web giant has scanned millions of books and made them available online via its eBooks platform.

Google had negotiated the deal to settle a six-year-old class action suit claiming infringement of copyright.

But the New York court said the deal would "simply go too far", giving Google an unfair competitive advantage.

Copyright concerns

Under the agreement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google would continue to digitise books and sell access online.

In return, the company would pay $125m (£76.9m) in royalties every year to the copyright owners of the books being scanned.

However, copyright concerns persisted, as the ownership of many of the works being scanned by Google could not be established, meaning many would be unable to claim the royalty payment.

"The [amended settlement agreement] would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case," said judge Denny Chin.

The US Department of Justice has approved the ruling and said it was the "right result."

It has been critical of Google's deal, saying it would give Google exclusive rights to profit from "orphan works", where the rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.

Gina Talamon, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the agreement "created concerns regarding antitrust, class certification and copyright issues."

The agreement is also separately being investigated by the US Department of Justice on competition and copyright grounds.
Google's plan

Google responded to the ruling saying it was 'disappointing'.

"We'll review the Court's decision and consider our options," said Google's managing counsel, Hilary Ware.

"Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the US today," she added.

"Regardless of the outcome, we'll continue to work to make more of the world's books discoverable online through Google Books and Google eBooks."

Google has already scanned some 15 million books.

"US judge writes unhappy ending for Google's online library plans"

Some authors had complained they had not given permission for books to be scanned and made available online

by

Dominic Rushe

March 23rd, 2011

The Guardian

Google's controversial plans to create the world's biggest online library have been shelved by a US judge.

In a ruling filed in the US district court in Manhattan, judge Denny Chin ruled the company had gone "too far" in its ambitious plans and rejected a legal settlement with authors and publishers that Google reached in 2008.

The web giant has scanned millions of books, many held at some of the world's greatest libraries including Oxford University's Bodleian and Harvard's libraries, and made them available online via its eBooks platform. The plan has split the publishing industry and attracted fierce criticism from authors and rival tech firms.

While Google said it would show only snippets of works that are in copyright, some authors complained that they had not given their permission for the scanning in the first place and were wary of Google's future plans.

In court Google rejected calls for an "opt-in" solution where copyright owners would decide whether or not to be part of the scanning project. The company said the idea was not viable. Chin suggested he might look more favourably on a settlement that allowed copyright owners to "opt in".

"While the digitisation of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many," Chin wrote, Google's current pact would "simply go too far". It would "give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission," he said.

The agreement rejected by Chin was negotiated with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Under the settlement, Google would continue to digitise books and sell access online and the company would pay $125m (£76.9m) in royalties every year to the copyright owners of the books being scanned.

Copyright concerns persisted, however, as the ownership of many of the works being scanned by Google could not be established.

Hilary Ware, managing counsel for Google, said the judge's decision was disappointing. "We believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the US today," she said. "Regardless of the outcome, we'll continue to work to make more of the world's books discoverable online through Google Books and Google eBooks."

"Publishers are prepared to modify the settlement agreement to gain approval," said John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, in a statement issued by the Association of American Publishers. He said they would work to overcome the objections raised by the court.

Google co-founder Larry Page was the author of the firm's plans to make 150m books accessible via the search engine. He has been promoting the idea since shortly after the company was formed in 1998.

Google began working with several libraries in 2004 to scan and digitise books and other writings in their collections, and has said it has completed 10% of the effort. The search engine currently allows users to search about two million books that are out of copyright, including the works of William Shakespeare. That service will be unaffected by the ruling.

Chin's decision is the latest in a series of setbacks. The plans have attracted criticism not only in the US but across Europe and in China and Canada. It is also separately being investigated by the US Justice Department on competition and copyright grounds.

"Judge Rejects Google’s Deal to Digitize Books"

by

Miguel Helft

March 22nd, 2011

The New York Times

Google’s ambition to create the world’s largest digital library and bookstore has run into the reality of a 300-year-old legal concept: copyright.

The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.

The decision throws into legal limbo one of the most ambitious undertakings in Google’s history, and it brings into sharp focus concerns about the company’s growing power over information. While the profit potential of the book project is not clear, the effort is one of the pet projects of Larry Page, the Google co-founder who is set to become its chief executive next month. And the project has wide support inside the company, whose corporate mission is to organize all of the world’s information.

“It was very much consistent with Larry’s idealism that all of the world’s information should be made available freely,” said Ken Auletta, the author of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

But citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners.

Judge Chin acknowledged that “the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many,” but said that the proposed agreement was “not fair, adequate and reasonable.” He left open the possibility that a substantially revised agreement could pass legal muster. Judge Chin was recently elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, but handled the case as a district court judge.

The decision is also a setback for the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which sued Google in 2005 over its book-scanning project. After two years of painstaking negotiations, the authors, publishers and Google signed a sweeping settlement that would have brought millions of printed works into the digital age.

The deal turned Google, the authors and the publishers into allies instead of opponents. Together, they mounted a defense of the agreement against an increasingly vocal chorus of opponents that included Google rivals like Amazon and Microsoft, as well as academics, some authors, copyright experts, the Justice Department and foreign governments.

Now the author and publisher groups have to decide whether to resume their copyright case against Google, drop it or try to negotiate a new settlement.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said in an interview that it was too early to tell what the next step would be. “The judge did expressly leave the door open for a revised settlement,” he said.

Hilary Ware, managing counsel at Google, said in a statement that the decision was “clearly disappointing,” adding: “Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the U.S. today.” The company would not comment further.

Google has already scanned some 15 million books. The entire text of books whose copyrights have expired are available through Google’s Book Search service. It shows up to 20 percent of copyrighted titles that it has licensed from publishers, and only snippets of copyrighted titles for which it has no license.

The settlement would have allowed it to go much further, making millions of out-of-print books broadly available online and selling access to them. It would have given authors and publishers new ways to earn money from digital copies of their works.

Yet the deal faced strong opposition. Among the most persistent objections, raised by the Justice Department and others, were concerns that it would have given Google exclusive rights to profit from millions of so-called orphan works, books whose rights holders are unknown or cannot be found. They also said no other company would be able to build a comparable library, leaving Google free to charge high prices for its collection. And some critics said the exclusive access to millions of books would help cement Google’s grip on the Internet search market.

Judge Chin largely agreed with the critics on those points. But he suggested that substantial objections would be eliminated if the settlement applied only to books whose authors or copyright owners would explicitly “opt in” to its terms.

When the Justice Department suggested as much last year during a court hearing, Google rejected the idea as unworkable. It would leave millions of orphan works out of the agreement and out of Google’s digital library, greatly diminishing its value to Google and to the public.

“Opt-in doesn’t look all that different from ordinary licensing deals that publishers do all the time,” said James Grimmelmann, a professor at New York Law School who has studied the legal aspects of the agreement. “That’s why this has been such a big deal — the settlement could have meant orphan books being made available again. This is basically going back to status quo, and orphan books won’t be available.”

Some longtime opponents of the settlement hailed the decision, saying that they hoped it would prompt Congress to tackle legislation that would make orphan works accessible.

“Even though it is efficient for Google to make all the books available, the orphan works and unclaimed books problem should be addressed by Congress, not by the private settlement of a lawsuit,” said Pamela Samuelson, a copyright expert at the University of California, Berkeley who helped organize efforts to block the agreement.

Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement that the court had reached the “right result.”

A group of publishers said they were disappointed by the decision, but believed that it provided “clear guidance” on the changes necessary for the settlement to be approved.

John Sargent, the chief executive of Macmillan, spoke on behalf of the publishers, which included Penguin Group USA, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons.

“The publisher plaintiffs are prepared to enter into a narrower settlement along those lines to take advantage of its groundbreaking opportunities,” Mr. Sargent said in a statement. “We hope the other parties will do so as well.”

He added: “The publisher plaintiffs are prepared to modify the settlement agreement to gain approval. We plan to work together with Google, the Authors Guild and others to overcome the objections raised by the court and promote the fundamental principle behind our lawsuit, that copyrighted content cannot be used without the permission of the owner, or outside the law.”

"Google Books Settlement Rejected"

by

David Kravets

March 22nd, 2011

Wired

Saying the deal goes “too far,” a federal judge Tuesday rejected Google’s proposed legal settlement with book publishers, an accord that would have paved a path toward digitizing the world’s books.

“While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA [Amended Settlement Agreement] would simply go too far. It would permit this class action — which was brought against defendant Google Inc. to challenge its scanning of books and display of ’snippets’ for on-line searching — to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin of New York ruled. “Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case”.

Tuesday’s decision centers on Google’s long-running bid to end a 2005 lawsuit, which Google proposed settling with book publishers and authors of works registered in the United States or published in the United Kingdom, Australia or Canada.

For the most part, the parties have agreed to allow Google to scan their works, sell them on the internet and have them pop up in search results, while allowing up to 20 percent of the text to display in a search.

The rights holders get 67 percent of the take and Google the remainder. This part of the deal — the least controversial — does not preclude any other Google competitor from negotiating a deal, or even a better deal, to perform the same function as Google.

But when it comes to millions of so-called orphaned works, Google’s proposal goes too far, Chin said. Google would be able to scan them, sell them and place up to 20 percent of a title’s words in search results — all without the rights holder’s consent. Chin said Congress, not he, should “establish a mechanism for exploiting unclaimed books.”

Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, the Obama administration and dozens of others had urged Chin to reject the deal. The Authors Guild, however, supported the plan, regardless of its legalities — all in a bid to legitimize a fledgling online book-selling business in a world beginning to embrace the digital word as the gospel.

The Obama administration summed up the issue in what is best described as an intellectual and legal crossroads. The administration told Chin — a President Bill Clinton appointee — that despite the legal uncertainties, Google’s idea “offers the potential for important societal benefits.”

To appease copyright concerns, however, Google has agreed to place the proceeds from the sales of millions of orphaned works in a trust in hopes that rights holders would come forward, collect their royalties, and either sign up for Google’s book program or walk away.

What’s more, when it comes to orphaned works, the deal gives Google immunity from copyright-act violations — which can run as high as $150,000 an infringement.

The antitrust issue comes into play because no other entity — like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo — would enjoy the same luxury. A rights holder of an orphaned work could sue those companies for digitizing and selling that orphaned work without permission. The deal, however, forbids Google from being sued.

“This is clearly disappointing, but we’ll review the court’s decision and consider our options. Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the U.S. today,” Hilary Ware, Google’s managing counsel, said in a statement.

Once they come forward and collect, they can continue to be bound by Google’s terms, negotiate new ones and even strike deals with others, including Google’s competitors, Google said.

Google has digitized and opened to online search more than 15 million books since 2002 — a move that prompted the lawsuit and settlement. More than 2 million of those books are out of copyright and in the public domain. Google makes those available online for free in PDF form.

Chin urged continuing negotiations and set a hearing in New York federal court for April 25. He said some of his concerns might be “ameliorated” if the deal did not require authors to “opt out.”