Ex Libris Google

The recently formed Open Book Alliance, whose members include Microsoft Amazon and Yahoo, lodged a submission to the Federal Court in New York on September 9 claiming that Google is trying to set up a monopoly on digital information.

The drama began three years ago when the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) filed a class action lawsuit against Google Books saying it was potentially breaching copyright by creating free on-line copies of “orphan” books held in library archives. Orphan books are books whose copyright holders cannot be traced or which are out-of-print.

The AAP and authors were concerned people could lose their intellectual property rights if they didn’t know they had them or hadn’t followed them up. Google settled the class action last October with a commitment to establish a $125 million fund to reimburse authors for books that might be later identified, and also agreed to give 63 per cent of its digital book sales to participating authors and publishers.

This American ruling has created a lot of confusion and opposition from outside the United States because of the complex and overlapping nature of international copyright law.

The US District Court will hold a final hearing on October 7. Submissions to the hearing closed on September 9 with a raft of entries from the Alliance and individual companies.

The US Register of Copyrights complained in one submission: “[It] gives a compulsory license for the benefit of one company. The deal far exceeds the bounds of a typical legal settlement. It would tread directly on Congress’ jurisdiction, privatizing important copyright and public policy decisions historically made by Congress. It abuses class action procedure to create an exclusive joint venture between Google, the AAP and the Authors’ Guild, strengthening Google’s dominance in search and creating a cartel for the sale of digitized books.”

The Justice Department has until September 18 to file its brief which may clarify anti-trust concerns.

Google supporters claim these concerns are unfounded.

The Computer Communications Industry Association argues that Google’s non-exclusive agreement won’t prevent other merchants from selling electronic books – if they can spend an estimated $100 million to enter the e-book market – and Sony Corporation says the supply of books available through Google’s digital library would foster innovation and lower prices for electronic readers of all brands. According to Sony, more companies would have an incentive to sell digital books and create a win-win for readers worldwide.

– BY JEREMY BROWN