The revised Google Books settlement agreement may quiet international opponents, but it still gives Google a monopoly on commercializing out-of-print books where the copyrights are unclaimed and fails to protect consumer privacy, opponents said on Monday.
"We're at a cross roads," Internet Archive Director Brewster Kahle said during a panel late Monday on the Future of Books at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. "Is it going to be a subscription life...where one or two companies own the distribution and presentation (rights) to these books?"
In response, Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy said: "This is just one of a panoply of choices that people will have in the future."
Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive director, and Dan Clancy, engineering director of Google Books, face off during a panel at the Commonwealth Club.
(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET)Google is scanning and digitizing books in libraries and publishers' catalogs so people can view and search them online and buy electronic versions. The company is striking deals with publishers for copyright-protected books and offering to pay rights holders to digitize out-of-print works, and will share revenue from sales with authors.
The agreement would settle a 2005 copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild over Google's book scanning plans.
Key concerns focus on licensing rights to so-called "orphan works" where the copyright holder is unknown, as well as books where the rights holder has not stepped forward--together estimated to represent more than half of the available works.
The modified settlement, filed in federal court in New York late on Friday, attempts to address U.S. Department of Justice concerns that the settlement would give Google unfair competitive advantages and violated copyright law.
Copyrights holders now have more control than they previously had. Authors and publishers were given seats on a Books Rights Registry board, a nonprofit that would be responsible for making payments and holding revenue from unclaimed works for up to 10 years. The registry is now required to search for copyright holders who have not yet come forward and revenue from unclaimed works will be used to locate copyright holders instead of for operations or distribution it to known copyright holders.
The revised settlement also could remove some of the heat Google was getting from governments in other countries over copyright concerns. Author and publisher groups in Germany, France, China, and elsewhere have voiced opposition to the Google Books plan. In response, Google, the Authors Guild, and other parties in the settlement excluded any out-of-print works not registered in the U.S. or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada.
"Just because they are taken out of the agreement doesn't mean Google will stop scanning their books," Pam Samuelson, director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, said of the works from the other countries. "Google has already scanned many of their books."
Also troubling to critics is the fact that the revised settlement circumvents traditional copyright provisions by allowing Google to digitize orphan works without first getting rights holder permission, while any Google competitors are blocked from doing so barring legislation granting them licensing rights.
"For the millions of volumes of orphan books that Google has already scanned in, they can offer those without risk of anyone coming forward and suing them for infringement," said John Simpson, a consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog.
The Justice Department's main concerns were not addressed, others added. (A DOJ spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment.)
"The Department of Justice was trying to get them to also create a mechanism for licensing to third parties and the amended settlement agreement doesn't go that far," Samuelson said. "It creates a fiduciary for unclaimed books to potentially license unclaimed books at some point in the future, but only if Congress passes orphan works legislation."
Why monetize unclaimed works before getting permission?
Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, wrote on his blog: "Given that everyone is so positive that you CAN find rights holders for most of these unclaimed works, why not go out and find them first, then ask if they want to be included. Surely the settlement can generate enough money from books with known authors to fund that without having to include these books at the outset?"
"The Registry is trying to lay claim and charge for, monetize, works that have never been claimed and this is what causes the whole thing to be broken," Kahle of the Internet Archive said after the Commonwealth panel. The Internet Archive has been scanning books and archiving all types of media for years, but on nonprofit resources.
However, Clancy said most of the unclaimed works will eventually be claimed and predicted there would be legislation soon to resolve the matter. "We will have orphan works legislation before this thing is over ... [because of the settlement] people are pushing to resubmit it as we speak," he said.
Samuelson and other critics are worried that as a result of Google having the only comprehensive collection of out-of-print books, there will not be competitive pressure on the company to keep prices fair. "The risk of price gouging over time is very high and universities in particular have experienced excessive increases in prices of scholarly journals over the last few years," she said.
Samuelson reiterated her concerns about pricing at the Commonwealth panel event, adding that she doesn't think Google will price gouge in the immediate future, but that it could happen in the longer term. Clancy made no assurances but mentioned something about there being alternatives, like physical books, and that "the platform is there to provide the protections."
"The settlement is a total failure to address most of the problems the Justice Department raised and virtually all the problems raised by U.S. objectors and amicus [friends of the court] briefs," said Gary Reback, an antitrust lawyer and leader in the Open Book Alliance, whose members include nonprofit author groups, library institutions, and Google rivals Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo.
"If we are going to allow Congress to [pass a law granting others licensing rights for orphaned works] why do we need a settlement?" said Reback. "The right way to do this would be to have Congress deal with it; not for Google to give itself a preference."
Of the settlement's handling of orphan works, James Grimmelman, a professor at New York Law School, writes on his blog that "It's a very clever hack. I have my doubts whether it's legal." Google remains "the only game in town" for unclaimed works, he said. (For more on the copyright implications of the settlement read Larry Downes' guest column on CNET News.)
The amended settlement also does not provide privacy protections for consumers that privacy advocates and authors including Michael Chabon, Bruce Schneier, and Jonathan Lethem had requested.
"One of our core privacy concerns with the settlement has been that reading records are not properly protected from disclosure to the government and third parties," the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California wrote in a blog post. "Readers should be able to use Google Book Search without worrying that the government or a third party is reading over their shoulder."
In response to Samuelson complaining at the Commonwealth event that the revised settlement offers no privacy protections for consumers, Google's Clancy said, "We didn't think the settlement was the right place to discuss this."
Updated 8:20 p.m. PST with Google, Internet Archive, and Samuelson comments at Commonwealth Club event Monday night.
Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.
A month and a half after Google and the leading trade associations for publishers and authors withdrew their proposed settlement over Google Books, the parties on Friday filed a new version of the agreement.
The hope is that this new draft (now weighing in at 165 pages) will respond to the many objections to the original version, particularly those from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Significantly, the revised settlement excludes books published outside the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. And the registry that will collect royalties on sales of out-of-print works whose copyright owners are unknown will now act independently of Google. Some privacy concerns were also clarified. But I doubt that those who screamed the loudest will be satisfied with the changed document.
What the objectors--including most of Google's competitors, regulators, and a gaggle of overwrought law professors--seemed to dislike most was Google's audacity, specifically in using technology to solve a problem created by lawmakers in the first place. New objections, more attenuated and jargon-laded, will no doubt follow, until federal judge Denny Chin grabs the reigns of this increasingly unwieldy class action and steers it to resolution.
Let's back up. In 2004, Google began to scan all of the books languishing in some of the world's leading research libraries. Today, Google Books lets anyone search the contents of these libraries for free. For books whose copyright has expired, Google makes the entire text available and downloadable.
Citing possible copyright infringement, however, Google was sued in 2005 by the leading trade associations for authors and publishers. After three years of intensive negotiations, the two sides worked out a detailed settlement. The original agreement seemed to create a cheap and elegant solution to a problem that has plagued scholars, librarians, and ordinary readers for decades: how to provide low-cost access to books no longer in print but whose copyrights have yet to expire.
But then the objections began pouring into Judge Chin's chambers. The problem, according to most of these complaints, is that the agreement gives too much market power to Google over out-of-print books. How's that again? Out-of-print books, by definition, are those for which there is no market today, nor likely to be one any time in the future.
Thanks to advances in information technology, it may now be cost-effective to offer these works to their limited, if passionate, audiences. Google Books, in any case, is investing heavily to develop these markets. The revised settlement makes it even easier for potential competitors to do the same without having to rescan the old books. But let's not kid ourselves. It will be some time before we know if there's any revenue here worth fighting about, let alone an antitrust problem.
The real problem, which no one has the guts to face directly, is the sad state of copyright law. Copyright grants authors and their publishers the exclusive right to make copies of their work in order to encourage the growth of intellectual life, from novels to research papers to songs to cookbooks.
Lawmakers are supposed to balance that powerful control--in this case, a legal monopoly--against the value to consumers of letting information flow as freely as possible. That's a goal that has become fantastically easier and cheaper with the creation of the World Wide Web, high-resolution cell phone displays and other portable reading devices, and the digitization of just about all the world's information, much of it thanks to companies like Google.
Yet even as information distribution gets cheaper, entertainment industry lobbyists have pressured lawmakers to extend the copyright monopoly to absurd levels. The "fair use" exceptions have been all but eliminated through strategic litigating. Civil and criminal penalties for infringement are regularly enhanced, as recently as last year. In the only case of thousands brought by the recording industry that actually went to trial, a file-sharing user was found liable for nearly $2 million dollars in damages for sharing 24 songs. Yet the Obama Justice Department filed a brief supporting that penalty as "rational."
Worst of all, consumers must wait longer and longer for works to enter the public domain, where they can be freely copied, adapted, and sampled. As recently as 1909, a copyright lasted only 28 years in the United States. Since then, Congress has repeatedly extended it and applied the extensions retroactively. Today, copyright runs from the moment of creation until the death of the author, plus another 70 years.
Acknowledging that the U.S. Constitution requires copyright to be for "limited times," the late Congressman Sonny Bono once proposed changing the term to forever minus a day. No copyright on work produced by Disney has ever expired. That's not a coincidence.
Since most published works never make a profit, however, millions of books still under copyright are now out of print, existing only in the ghost towns of a few dingy library stacks. The authors of a growing number of these works are long dead, having made no provision for the inheritance of their rights. Since these books cannot be copied without permission, and no one knows who can give that permission, they inhabit a kind of intellectual limbo. Copyright scholars refer to them as "orphan works."
So far, Google has scanned 10 million books. Two million are old enough to be free of copyright, and another 2 million are still in print (Google has made separate agreements with the publishers of those books). The other 6 million are in copyright but out of print, many of them orphans. Thanks to the madness of recent copyright extensions, that category is certain to get bigger all the time. Congress has tried and failed for years to pass legislation dealing with orphan works.
In large part, the revised Google Books settlement would bring these books back to the world of the living. How? Copyright owners who don't want to participate in the deal must opt out of it, impossible by definition for orphan works. (The opt-out, to dispel a common myth, can occur at any time, not just before the settlement is approved.) So Google would have the right to make these books available in digital form, with any revenue going to a new nonprofit registry that will attempt to locate and compensate the owners.
Tellingly, the objectors say little to nothing about the impact of the settlement on consumers, who already benefit from Google's efforts and would benefit even more, if the agreement is approved.
The interests of information users ought to be the top priority of U.S. copyright officials, but Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights, condemned the original agreement. She spoke on behalf of the theoretical owners of orphan works--authors and publishers, in other words, who were given a powerful monopoly and then abandoned it. Peters accused Google and the organizations who sued the company of conspiring to execute an "end-run around copyright law as we know it."
There's the real problem. Copyright "as we know it" is a disaster and an embarrassment. Rather than complain about the ingenuity, leadership, and careful diplomacy of Google in trying to clean it up, why doesn't Peters focus on the job she was hired to do: urging Congress to bring copyright law in line with the realities of the 21st century?
Congress and its enthrallment to entertainment lobbyists created this mess. Reset the balance of copyright to something fair for authors and consumers, and all the objections to the Google Books settlement evaporate.
A revised settlement filed late Friday over Google's right to scan digital books places additional limits on the company.
The settlement allows out-of-print books from only English-speaking countries to be scanned, restricts the ways that Google can make money from scanning and digitizing out-of-print books, and requires a registry to seek out copyright holders who do not come forward.
The amended settlement comes after Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted on Monday a deadline extension to the parties to try to resolve issues that the U.S. Department of Justice had with the original October 2008 settlement.
The settlement now applies only to out-of-print books registered with the U.S. Copyright office or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada--countries that have a common legal heritage and similar book industry practices--according to the FAQ on the revised settlement.
Each of those countries will have an author and a publisher seat on a Book Rights Registry board, a nonprofit that will be responsible for paying authors and publishers.
The Book Rights Registry will be required to search for copyright holders who have not yet come forward and to hold revenue on their behalf, under the revised settlement. An independent fiduciary approved by the court will make decisions regarding unclaimed works.
Readers will be able to preview and purchase books, institutions can buy subscriptions, and libraries will have free access at designated terminals. The revised settlement limits Google's future business models from the works to individual subscriptions, print-on-demand, and digital downloads. The company will need to get approval from the registry's board and provide notice to all claiming copyright holders before implementing any of the business models.
Copyright holders can now choose to make their books available for free or allow reuse under Creative Commons, as well have the option to modify or remove restrictions placed on Google's display of their books, such as limits on the number of pages that users can print.
The settlement still allows any bookstore to sell online access to out-of-print books covered by the settlement, including unclaimed books. Copyright holders will still receive 63 percent of such revenue, while retailers will keep the majority of the remaining 37 percent.
A portion of the revenue generated from unclaimed works may be used to locate copyright holders after five years and will not be used for the registry's general operations or redistributed to other copyright holders as previously planned. After 10 years, the registry may ask the court to distribute these funds to nonprofits.
The Book Rights Registry will now hold unclaimed funds for 10 years, instead of five. After that time, the funds will go to nonprofits in the English speaking countries.
The Registry also is prohibited from sharing pricing information with anyone but the book's copyright holder, according to settlement. Authors and publishers will have until March 31, 2011, to make claims for the $60 to $300 per-book-digitization payments, and have until March 9, 2012, to remove works from Google's database.
The revised settlement makes it clear that Google will not display any content by default from works that are for sale as new internationally, which are considered commercially available. In addition, it includes language that specifies that Google will not share any private information with the registry without valid legal process.
Authors and publishers from outside of the covered countries can still enter into promotional and revenue-generating programs through Google's Partner Program.
"The changes we've made in our amended agreement address many of the concerns we've heard (particularly in limiting its international scope), while at the same time preserving the core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rightsholders with ways to sell and control their work online," Dan Clancy, Google Books engineering director, said in a statement.
"We're disappointed that we won't be able to provide access to as many books from as many countries through the settlement as a result of our modifications, but we look forward to continuing to work with rightsholders from around the world to fulfill our longstanding mission of increasing access to all the world's books," Clancy said.
According to Google's FAQ, the court will create a timeline for the revised settlement, "which will likely include a notice period, an objection period, and a final fairness hearing in early 2010."
Google is seeking rights to scan and display out-of-print books as part of a larger effort to create the modern day equivalent to the Library of Alexandria. Opponents argue that the settlement puts too much power in the hands of one company.
In September, the Justice Department voiced objections to the proposed settlement on antitrust grounds. The agency was bothered by the fact that Google and the Books Rights Registry, a nonprofit that will pay authors, would have sole control over the pricing of institutional subscriptions to the digital library. The DOJ also raised questions about whether the proposed settlement complied with Rule 23 of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, as well as copyright law in general.
Google first announced plans in 2003 to make books searchable and has hit snags with its efforts since, being sued by authors and facing opposition internationally.
Guess what? Google has too many Spocks and not enough Captain Kirks.
That was one of the many interesting insights BoomTown gleaned from a video interview Wednesday night with well-known New Yorker scribe Ken Auletta, who has just written a new book, "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It."
This "lack of emotional intelligence" at the search giant, said Auletta, reminded him a lot of the subject of one of his previous books: Microsoft.
Oh, the delicious irony!
Auletta was feted at a lovely party on Wednesday night for at the San Francisco house of Common Sense Media's Jim Steyer, where a range of Google execs, Internet folks, and fans gathered to talk about the book.
It's all about Google, its history and, most importantly, its impact on the world. And, how you look at the powerful search giant depends entirely on whether you are the changer or the changed, as Auletta stresses in multiple anecdotes in the book.
Traditional media, for example, has certainly been mucho irked of late about the impact of digital technologies on their businesses and has not been shy about casting blame most heapingly on Google's Silicon Valley plate.
And the government regulators are also giving the company the hairy eyeball, much as they had previously done to Microsoft.
Auletta and I talked about all that and more in the video interview here, in which he noted that he told Googlers at a talk at their adorkable Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, Calif., on Wednesday that they needed to focus less on being engineering brainiacs and more on trying to understand how to deal with fears of their growing power. (You can see interviews I did with guests here too).
Below that is one of the disturbing number of mash-up music videos about "Star Trek" buddies, the highly illogical Kirk and the Vulcanish Spock, the geek bromance of all time:
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
Story Copyright (c) 2009 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.
Additional stories from AllThingsD
In a move to assuage European publishers' concerns over book digitization, Google on Monday said European books still listed as commercially available will not be included in its online registry of orphaned and out-of-print works--unless rights holders give their express authorization.
The search giant also said it will let two non-U.S. representatives onto the eight-person board of the Books Rights Registry, which was set up to govern the proposed books settlement reached with U.S. publishers and authors who sued Google in 2005. Plaintiffs alleged that the company's digitizing initiative amounted to "massive" copyright infringement.
Under the terms of the settlement, Google agreed to pay the authors and publishers $125 million. The company will also be responsible for selling access to copyrighted works in its repository. Most of the revenues from such access would go to the authors and publishers.
But the U.S settlement--which has been alternately hailed by civil rights groups as a way to bridge the Digital Divide and hampered by opposition from authors and privacy advocates--will only apply to users in this country.
Google made its conciliatory gestures as the European Commission kicked off a series of discussions aimed at "seeking precise details on the exact scope of the settlement" and "how many European works or publications will potentially be affected."
At a hearing in Brussels Monday, organizations representing various European publishers, libraries, rights holders, and businesses involved in Internet commerce criticized the proposed settlement as it currently stands, saying it would lead to "a de facto monopoly" in the emerging digital books market.
Representing France at the hearing, Nicolas George of the country's Ministry of Culture said the deal presents "a clear and evident risk for cultural diversity," according to The New York Times.
"Google could unilaterally decide no longer to give access or modify access through a ranking scheme," George said, and for "political and ideological considerations."
The debates are expected to continue this week. On the first day of the events, Viviane Reding, the EU's commissioner for information society and media, and Charlie McCreevy, commissioner for the bloc's internal market, said in a joint statement that "it is time for Europe to turn over a new e-leaf on digital books and copyright," and that book digitization such as that being attempted by Google highlights the "need to adapt Europe's still very fragmented copyright legislation."
"The challenge for EU policymakers is to ensure a regulatory framework which paves the way for a rapid roll-out of services, similar to those made possible in the U.S. by the recent settlement, to European consumers and to the European library and research communities," the commissioners said.
The Internet Archive is enlisting some heavy hitters in its challenge of Google's proposed settlement with book publishers and authors.
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.
It's an unusual reunion for Reback, who marshaled industry opposition to Microsoft's efforts to squeeze Netscape from the browser business. Reback, who until 2000 was a partner at the storied firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, was responsible for compiling evidence to aid the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust case against Microsoft on behalf of Microsoft's Silicon Valley adversaries. In 2003, PeopleSoft hired Reback in its failed effort to fend off Oracle's hostile $6.3 billion takeover bid.
Reback is the second prominent attorney to be linked this week with the growing opposition to the settlement. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Scott Gant, a lawyer with Boies Schiller & Flexner, would act on his own as an author concerned about the use of class action status to lump all authors into the same pool.
Google is digitizing the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Stanford and Harvard universities, and is making those texts searchable on pages with advertisements. The Authors Guild, which represents more than 8,000 authors, sued Google in September 2005, alleging that the company's digitizing initiative amounted to "massive" copyright infringement. The suit was subsequently granted class action status.
Under the proposed $125 million settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, announced in October 2008, Google would have the right to show content from books online that are still in copyright but that are no longer in print. In addition, those copyright holders could be paid for online sales of their books.
Authors and publishers may opt out of the proposed settlement, but if they do nothing, they're considered part of it. That includes authors who can't be located.
Google has book-search agreements in place with numerous publishers, but the company hopes that the settlement will permit it to bring many more books into its service. In a victory for settlement opponents, a judge gave authors four more months to decide whether to participate.
Currently, users of Google Book Search are able to view snippets of books online. The settlement agreement would allow Google to make whole pages of copyright works available to online searchers.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If those organizations attacking Google's book search settlement with publishers spent as much time lobbying Congress for better laws concerning those issues, perhaps the controversy would go away, Google's chief Book Search engineer suggested Thursday night.
Dan Clancy, Google Book Search head engineer, defends Google's Book Search settlement Thursday.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)Google's quest to convince the world it has nothing to fear by its settlement with publishers came to the Computer History Museum Thursday where Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Book Search, defended the settlement before a few hundred attendees who submitted written questions to John Hollar, president and CEO of the museum. Last year, Google settled a lawsuit filed by publishers with an agreement that gives it the right to scan books that have copyright protection but are out of print even if the rights holder of the work can't be located to grant permission: rights holders have until September to opt out of the settlement and forbid Google from scanning their books if they so choose. The settlement is not final, and a final hearing is scheduled for October to approve the settlement.
Clancy argued that the vast majority of rights holders have every reason to work with Google, given that books that have copyright protection but have fallen out of print can be given a new lease on life if they can be searched, read, and eventually purchased over the Internet. Book publishers lose interest in printing a book if demand is low, but the Internet makes it possible for books to be distributed at extremely low cost.
The problem is that Google's settlement makes it the only organization in the U.S. with the legal authority to scan and publish so-called "orphan works," or books that are still under copyright protection but whose rights holders can not be located. when it began scanning books in general, and the thinking is that anybody else who tried to scan an orphan work and compete with Google's offering would be forced to follow a similar legal path to obtain the same freedom.
The Internet Archive has been one of the more prominent critics of Google's Book Search settlement, and distributed a statement prior to Thursday's event saying just that. "...no one else has the same legal protections that Google has. Would the parties to the settlement amend the settlement to extend legal liability indemnification to any and all digitizers of orphan works? If not, why not leave orphans out of the settlement and compel a legislative solution instead of striking a private deal in a district court?"
Under the settlement, the Books Rights Registry is allowed to cut deals with other companies or organizations looking to digitize books, but they are not allowed to extend the same privileges Google enjoys with respect to orphan works, which Clancy estimated as about 10 percent of the books that are out of print but still protected by copyright.
That's why a legislative solution that fixes the problems concerning orphan works is the best outcome for everyone with a stake in book digitization, and Google is leaning on Congress to get such a law passed, Clancy said. Given the pressing issues before Congress at the moment--not to mention the complexity of copyright law--finding champions for such legislation has been difficult, he said.
Google thinks that by obtaining the right to digitize orphan works, it will stimulate demand for digital book scanning that eventually forces Congress to act. Any law passed to loosen restrictions on the use of orphan works would take precedent over Google's settlement.
(Credit:
Google)
Google should promise to protect the privacy of consumers with its Book Search service, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Samuelson Law Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law said in a letter to the search giant on Thursday.
"Under its current design, Google Book Search keeps track of what books readers search for and browse, what books they read, and even what they 'write' down in the margins," the groups wrote in a letter (PDF) to Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt.
"Given the long and troubling history of government and third-party efforts to compel libraries and booksellers to turn over records about readers, it is essential that Google Books incorporate strong privacy protections in both the architecture and policies of Google Book Search," the letter said. "Without these, Google Books could become a one-stop shop for government and civil-litigant fishing expeditions into the private lives of Americans."
In 2006, the U.S. Attorney demanded that Amazon turn over book purchase records of 24,000 customers, the groups said in an e-mail statement.
Specifically, the groups are calling for Google to promise to respond only to properly issued warrants from law enforcement and court orders and notify readers if information about them has been requested; allow readers to search and browse anonymously; give readers control over their purchases and data and prevent others from viewing their activities; allow readers to give books to others without tracking; tell readers what information is being collected and maintained and why data has been disclosed if it has.
Google also should keep search log information for no longer than 30 days and agree not to share reader activity with third parties or link data collected about use of Book Search to any other Google services without user consent, the groups said.
A Google Books representative said it's premature for Google to say what its privacy policy will be, but that Google will continue to discuss the issues with advocates.
"We have a strong privacy policy in place now for Google Books and for all Google products. But our settlement agreement hasn't yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement haven't been built or even designed yet," Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Books, wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
"That means it's very difficult (if not impossible) to draft a detailed privacy policy," he wrote. "While we know that our eventual product will build in privacy protections--like always giving users clear information about privacy, and choices about what if any data they share when they use our services--we don't yet know exactly how this all will work. We do know that whatever we ultimately build will protect readers' privacy rights, upholding the standards set long ago by booksellers and by the libraries whose collections are being opened to the public through this settlement."
Google has negotiated deals with publishers for current works and is also digitizing public-domain works. For out-of-print books still protected by copyright, the company reached a $125 million proposed settlement with U.S. publishers and authors that awaits court approval.
Critics complain that the deal, which is scheduled to be implemented in October, would effectively give Google a monopoly over books that are in copyright but out of print. Google argues that the agreement will make millions of books hidden on library shelves more accessible and give publishers and authors a new opportunity to profit from them.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice said it was launching a formal investigation into the proposed settlement. And European Union regulators are also taking a close look.
European Union regulators want publishers and authors to weigh in on copyright issues with Google's book scanning and book search project, according to the Associated Press.
European Commission officials will meet with copyright holders on September 7 to discuss the search giant's $125 million proposed settlement with U.S. publishers and authors granting Google the right to digitize and publish books that are out of print but still protected by copyright law. The court overseeing the settlement has given authors a September 4 deadline to opt out individually if they don't not wish to participate. Google has negotiated many deals with some publishers for current works and is also digitizing public-domain works.
Critics complain that the deal, which is scheduled to be implemented in October, would effectively give Google a monopoly over books that are in copyright but out of print. Google argues that the agreement will make millions of books hidden on library shelves more accessible and give publishers and authors a new opportunity to profit from them.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice said it was launching a formal investigation into the proposed settlement.
A Google spokesperson told CNET News that the company will be at the EC meeting.
"What's currently planned is a fact-finding exercise by the Commission--not an investigation--and we're looking forward to taking part," the spokesperson said in an e-mail. "We agree with European Commissioner, Viviane Reding, when she said, "We should create a modern set of European rules that encourage the digitization of books."
Update 4:50 p.m. PDT: The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee also is considering a look at the matter, citing unknown people with whom the committee discussed its plans and a Google spokesman quoted as saying, "there's interest in having a hearing to explore the settlement."
Updated 2:42 p.m. PDT with background information on the settlement.
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Thursday that is has opened a formal investigation into the settlement between Google and book publishers over the digital publishing rights to certain books, citing antitrust concerns.
Such an investigation had been previously reported, and Google had confirmed that it had received requests from the government for information. But Judge Denny Chin, who is overseeing issues surrounding the settlement until it is implemented in October, received formal notice of an investigation Thursday from the DOJ and released the letter as part of the court docket concerning the case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
"The Antitrust Division is investigating the possibility of anticompetitive practices involving digital book intellectual property rights and distribution," said Gina Talamona, a DOJ representative. She declined to elaborate beyond that statement and the letter sent Thursday to Judge Chin.
Google issued a statement: "The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions. It's important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S."
Last October, Google settled a lawsuit filed by several publishing groups over its plan to digitize books through Google Books for $125 million. The settlement gave Google the right to digitize and publish books that are out of print but still protected by copyright law, forcing authors to opt out individually if they did not wish to participate. Google has negotiated deals with some publishers for current works, and is also digitizing public-domain works.
The settlement has drawn heated criticism from those who think Google was effectively handed a monopoly over these copyright-yet-out-of-print works, since anyone else who wished to publish those books would have to individually negotiate with their authors, many of whom can not be located very easily. Earlier this year Judge Chin extended the deadline for authors to decide whether they wish to participate in the settlement from May to September, with a final hearing scheduled to take place in October.
Google argues that any potential competitor who also wished to scan books could negotiate a deal with the Books Rights Registry, a nonprofit group set up as part of the settlement to represent the interests of authors. Some think that as a practical matter, however, Google's lead in this area is so beyond the reach of competitors as to discourage efforts to even try, and worry about the concentration of so much information in the hands of one company.
It has been an interesting year for Google and the federal government. After Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, publicly campaigned for President Obama last year, his administration has repaid the favor by taking a very close look at Google, beyond the book search settlement. The DOJ is reportedly looking into the hiring practices of several Silicon Valley companies, including Google, and the Federal Trade Commission has wondered if Schmidt's participation on Apple's board of directors is a conflict of interest given his participation on Google's board.
Google has shrugged off the concerns, noting that any large company should expect scrutiny from the federal government. Still, Google executives have embarked on a charm offensive of late, making the argument that Google really isn't that dominant a company and reminding everyone that the competition "is just a click away."
The letter from the DOJ is reproduced below:
SDNY Order DOJ Letter
