Google’s ambitious plan to digitize the world’s books was derailed by a New York federal judge . Antitrust and copyright problems voiced by opponents to a $125 million offer between Google and author and publisher groups succeeded in getting their voices heard. Even though the settlement was declined, those involved in the offer said the judgment provided guidance as to how it will achieve approval in the future.
Settling on Google Books
There was a program called Google Books that was started. The idea of the program is to take all novels that have been published and make them accessible on the internet digitally. The Association of American Publishers put together a lawsuit in 2005 with the Authors Guild. The book-scanning project got Google sued. Google paid $125 million in 2008 in a negotiation. It agreed to make sure that every time a book was viewed online, a publisher and author would get paid for it. The settlement has been mired in the legal system as opponents such as Amazon, Microsoft, the Justice Department, copyright experts and some foreign governments argued against it. Denny Chin is the Manhattan federal court. On Tuesday, he said that it would not be right for Google Books to do this because it would create a monopoly and exploit the works of copyright holders without permission.
The orphan works problem
There was one objection that Judge Chin had the most and it was to a provision in the Google Books negotiation. This would, unless an author and publisher opted out, allow to business to digitize any books. Chin suggested that changing the provision to “opt in” could open the door to approval. There was a reason for the opt-out provision though. You will find “orphan works” to be considered. You will find many orphan works. This is when a copyright owner cannot be found or is unknown. An opt-in would make it extremely hard to use orphan works, Google says. The point of this was for Google Books to be able to include orphan novels to be accessible to anyone. Opponents of the settlement said the availability of orphan works is a problem best addressed by Congress, not the settlement of a private lawsuit.
There are antitrust issues to consider
Google defends its book-scanning project as an effort to “democratize knowledge” by offering every book ever written, which is about 130 million and counting, according to the business. Antitrust worries are there as well though. Nobody would be able to compete with such a complete library as Google would have with this program. All the novels accessible to Google Books would leave it always being used. There is no way anyone would ever be able to beat the company. As the battle goes on, Google has scanned about 15 million novels. In Google’s Book Search, you are able to find books with expired copyrights as well as 20 percent of copyrighted titles. On Google, sample texts are available for all copyrighted titles. It doesn’t matter if they have been licensed or not.
Articles cited
New York Times
nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Financial Times
ft.com/cms/s/2/f7ee4948-54bf-11e0-b1ed-00144feab49a.html#axzz1HR3IHDr1
PC World
pcworld.com/article/222963/judge_rejects_google_book_deal_over_monopoly_concerns.html
Leave a Reply