Reports: DOJ steps up Google Books settlement probe

The Justice Department appears to be stepping up its antitrust probe of Google's settlement last year of a class-action lawsuit filed by groups representing authors and publishers, according to reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department has sent formal requests for information, called civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to publishers involved in the settlement, according to the reports. The increased scrutiny may signal the Justice Department's opposition to the settlement, which still requires court approval.

Under the proposed $125 million settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, announced in October, 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 to into its service. In a victory for settlement opponents, a judge gave authors four more months to decide whether to participate.

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. Five large publishers filed a separate lawsuit as representatives of the Association of American Publishers.

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.

[LilySpark01]

THey dont see my book which was just published as commercially availiable. Thats Rubbish. Its in Bookstores now!
Sincerly Lily Sparkletoon

[gerrrg]

I guess what this means, is that both the Author's Guild and the AAP can't speak for their constituency after all. Which kinda makes you wonder why Congress rolled over for RIAA and the MPAA, when we know that there are independent voices that are opposed to the DMCA.

[faceless128]

it always amuses me to see people still living in the stone ages thinking that making it harder to find their work is a good thing.

[henebry]

As a scholar who places the value of knowledge and learning above the copyright, I'm amazed at the good work Google is doing and at the resistance it's encountering. When I look for an academic publisher, I want one that will make my work more readily available. In future, those will be the books that get read and cited, not the snippet view ones.

[Setai]

What's the problem here, in general ? The way I see it Google is doing a great job here, especially for students. I remember from my college times in Europe, that often we had to search old or unaccessible books , with very limited amount of copies and none in print. With this, Google could significantly help with education, especially for non English speakers.
One thing that worries me a bit is that it's yet another thing controlled by the single most valuable corporation in the world ... but that's a topic for a completely different discussion.
Thanks for the post!
John
[CNET editor's note: Prohibited spam deleted.]

[istill316]

Yet that's exactly the point, and not a different discussion at all! No single company should be given the rights to so much.
Google makes all of its money by advertising on other people's creations: a rather lame, morally questionable business plan, if you ask me!

As for "opt-out" deals, I think they should be illegal. It's absurd that anybody, let alone Google, could claim the right to do anything, as long as the people who's products are stolen don't speak up. It's a major power grab by Google, and would be successful if not enough authors did speak up; just like search, they could become so big and all-encompassing that it could be near suicide to not participate. That's called having a monopoly, and called extortion.

[timothywmurray]

Harvard is not participating in the Google book scan project, at least not for books covered by the settlement.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=524989#
@henebry you are completely correct. Thanks for posting the comment I agree completely.

[stevenmusil]

Harvard University was one of the first participants announced in the Google Book scan project in 2004. For more information on the Harvard project, see this Harvard Library FAQ:
http://hul.harvard.edu/hgproject/faq.html

[aintnorainbowdorothy]

All I have to add is it's about time Google got a little of whart Microsoft has had to go through. Hopefully the DOJ will go after other parts of that monopolistic entity. Good for people of the world, bad for Google, which is a good thing.

[HeartofHistory]

Locking up orphan works benefits no one except, perhaps, the occasional used / antiquarian bookseller. And often a book I'm looking for isn't available anywhere for sale and the only copy in my state is stored in a university library storage facility which I can't access.

How many authors would want their work so hidden away?

The Google settlement at least gave these works a chance to once more be read AND for their authors (or heirs) to receive some remuneration.

Right now, an author gets NOTHING from any book that's sold through a used book dealer (in the US). And non-academic readers often get nothing to read, either.

What other company or agency is going to step up and offer to do what Google has?

[tgrenier]

Is it fair to say that libraries do the same thing Google is trying to do? Make books available to the public for free. I consider my self pro library and pro author compensation. Perhaps I am conflicted.