Coalition to challenge Google Books settlement

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.

[servermaker]

Google does no evil, right? What's the fuss about.

[Adjusters1]

As the Authors can opt out, it's obviously just a money/power play. Well that's life with the big boys, and part of the cost of doing business.

Opting out of every vendor's service is a full time job in itself. If opt-out is the norm and you're not actively looking, someone would be able to go ahead and steal your stuff. Just like what Google is doing to movie studios and musicials with YouTube. If they want to be able to use content, they should be forced to clear it and negotiate rights. If they think that's too cumbersome, they should move on to another business.

[gerrrg]

Oh boy, I can just imagine how the authors would be upset at getting 70% of the revenue for any sales, considering most of them get somewhere between 5 and 15%.<br /><br />This Authors Guild specifically cites that, "opting out of the settlement is for authors who want to preserve their right to sue Google themselves. WE DON'T THINK THERE ARE ANY SUCH AUTHORS."<br /><br />Additionally, the Guild states, "You are fully protected. The settlement gives rights holders full control over how their books appear in the program."

[JasonCe]

Google SUCKS! <br /> <br />They are the ultimate Internet bully. Trying to push everybody to give their content for a small fee while they enjoy huge monopolistic ad profit margins. <br /> <br />I don't like what they do anymore. I stopped using Google a loooong time ago... :(

[gerrrg]

Oh yeah, that reminds me of Microsoft, and how they were able to get OOXML adopted as a standard open format over ODF. And then there's ASP, and how only IE can 'serve' these pages. And nevermind Microsoft's 90% control of the desktop OS market, 85-94% control of the productivity suite market, and 68% of the browser market.<br /><br />OH sure, Google with all their ad-based free services makes them real bad.

[selfkill]

Who said anything about Microsoft? I love it how people have instant knee-jerk reactions when anyone says anything critical about any competitor of Microsoft and thus instigating an onslaught of Microsoft bashing. No, this article is about Google and this comment is about Google so let's talk about Google.<br /><br />And just because Google offers "free" ad-supported services doesn't mean they do no harm. I think you'd complain too if Google was making a buck off of your hard work. Especially when they're making billions in net income.

[knowles2]

Because the report is about Microsoft and it newly acquired Yahoo with iAmazon toe all ganging up on poor google. The article is about that and not specifically Google for once,

[selfkill]

Poor Google making it's billions of dollars with its dominance over the search market and it's woe-is-me inflated stock. There is no reason to specifically bash Microsoft here and just FYI since you seem to be out of the loop: Yahoo hasn't been acquired by Microsoft--they simply formed a strategic alliance, which is smart considering if you combine their total market share, they still only account for 10%.

[knowles2]

With the only long term beneficiary is Microsoft them getting Yahoo to abandon it search and use Microsoft is clearly design by Microsoft to devalue the company in the long run, whiles getting Yahoo staff accustom to working with Microsoft, so when it does launch a full take over in the next 5 years, which almost certainly been agree verbally there will actually still be some engineering stuff wealth keeping aboard at Yahoo.

[Renegade Knight]

Reproducing out of print books if it's to be legit, should be legit for everone. Not just google. It would be handy if they applied the same rules to music. ;)

[gerrrg]

Let me educate you about the settlement.<br /><br />THE GOOGLE SETTLEMENT IS NON-EXCLUSIVE.<br /><br />Anyone else can follow the exact same path as Google, scan the millions of books that Google has done, and sign a royalty payment schedule with major authors' representatives.

[gerrrg]

@dano10000 - I said major authors' REPRESENTATIVES, as in Authors Guild.

[Renegade Knight]

@gerrrg <br /> <br />Thanks.

[Internet-Lawyer]

I love the move to digitize out of print books. Until Google came along no one else suggested doing it. As an &lt;a href="http://www.web20lawyer.com"&gt;Internet Lawyer&lt;/a&gt; I can see why Google would negotiate an exclusivity provision. Most publishers have the same provision.

[CrashPad63]

Microsoft started then quit when they realized the entanglements of copywrite. Now MS was not greed based like Googles, Bill Gates wanted a repository for all print for future generations. Google will monetize anything. Do no evil my a s s. They are the most devious corp in the world right now, except for Apple of course.

[JuggerNaut]

Microsoft is no freaking better. They're trying to lock the US Library of Congress into their proprietary technologies via the virtual access project they have teamed with the US Library of Congress...<br /><br />http://pcworld.about.com/od/sites/Microsoft-to-provide-virtual-a.htm<br /><br />...Microsoft is nothing more than a BIG hypocrite!

[Farthing Haypenny]

Google is doing us a major service by scanning these books and making them available. Copyright holders can opt out, and any other company that wants to can still scan and offer books. What's not to like about this? Compare and contrast to the behavior of Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Amazon etc. who all try to lock you in to their store, their device, their app, their DRM.

[-fjtorres-]

Google does no evil. <br />Riiighhht! <br />Check this, children: <br />http://hasbrouck.org/articles/GoogleBooks-WritersRights.pdf <br /> <br />It's a major ripoff job and exploitation of writers by google and the big publishers.

[gfsdfge]

Big corps are just big corps. They are not people. They ALL do evil if it is profitable and they can get away with it... Supporting one over the other is just plain foolish. Treat them all the same and maybe you'll be less likely to be screwed. If you work in IT, then you should be an IT professional. Use the best tool for the job and evaluate them without bias. Apple, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and any other are ONLY out to make Profit. I am an IT professional and I am generally part of the hiring process. I do not hire any "Fan boys" regardless of who there loyalties are sworn to. And yes, I program in JAVA/.Net and any other language that is the right tool for the project.

[knowles2]

What I do not get is one of the biggest problems people are having here is that google could create a monopoly. But surly with the second biggest engines guys on board the biggest retail firm on the internet and the biggest software company on the planet can butts heads together and create a rival product and sign the exact same deal google has manage to sign the majority of authors and publishers up. An with there combine brain power, monetary resources and technology could a product at least comparable to google or in fact it may be better than google. <br /><br />To me there is only one reason they are joining in the fray now and that to stop the huge advantage googel could obtain by using it digital library to developed a better search engine able to answers questions far better than any rival without the millions of scan books could do and that the only reason.<br />An when did Microsoft start to care about other people monopolies. <br /><br />An if Bill really wanted to do it for free and without monetising it then Google have sown the way for him to do it so why again is he and his company interfering.

[gerrrg]

In my opinion, the reason why Microsoft and Yahoo have jumped on board, is because they don't want to have to spend the same amount of money and time that Google already has spent, digitizing entire libraries around the world.<br /><br />Instead, Microsoft and Yahoo would prefer to force Google to open up its library so that they can take full advantage of Google's spent capital for their own selfish uses. The DOJ is quickly becoming a pawn of Microsoft.

[dalasc]

It is alway both amazing, and sad, how many people shoot from the hip with comments, accusations, and proclamations, without really understanding an issue first and doing any background research. If you are so mad at Google, can you even articulate the reasons and lay out fact based evidence? Are you following the trials? Attending if possible, or reading the transcripts later if not? NO!!!! Until you do, and actually have something legitimate to say, just hush already, do the rest of us a favor, and go away until you can act mature. You help nothing. You contribute nothing. Enough. <br /> <br />So far I'm proud of what Google, and Apple, do for humanity. While everyone else wakes up every day looking for the next way to be nasty, offensive, deceitful, greedy, and hateful, Apple and Google represent some of the few people out there trying to honestly get up every day and actually do something positive and helpful for the world. <br /> <br />Nobody's perfect. If you do happen to not like something about them, just shut up and use another person's product. Use a different search engine. Build your own smart phone company, digitize your own books, make your own deals with the music and movie companies and sell them yourself. In the meantime we don't need to hear your unsubstantiated nonsense, fanboy fanaticism, and outright lies.

[nitespark]

Wow, this is a very poorly written article. The author didn't even mention what the copyright office objected to. Here's a excerpt from a better article<br /><br />"This objection from the top US copyright authority certainly doesn't help Google's chances of legalizing its massive book scanning project. Peters doesn't like the fact that the proposed settlement covers far more than Google's past behavior?it covers all books published before January 5, 2009, whether they have already been scanned or not. In addition to covering past behavior, then, the settlement would allow the company to continue scanning for decades, if that's how long it takes to digitize every volume published before 2009."<br /><br />If you want to read the full article head here:<br /><br />http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/copyright-office-slams-google-book-deal-google-opens-up.ars<br />Cnet try to do a better job next time.