US authorities probe Google's digital books "monopoly"

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 29 Apr 2009 at 08:18

The US Justice Department is making inquiries about a class action deal that gives Google the right to digitise and sell entire libraries.

Under a proposed settlement last October between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google agreed to pay $125 million to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers can register works and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions or book sales.

Google's plan is to let readers search through millions of copyrighted books online, browse passages and purchase copies.

But the deal would also allow Google - and only Google - to digitise so-called orphan works, which has raised eyebrows in antitrust circles.

Orphan works are books or other materials that are still covered by US copyright law, but it is not clear who owns the rights to them.

"Essentially, it gives Google a free pass for infringement for selling all these books," says James Grimmelmann, who teaches at the New York Law School. "Publishers [who are part of the settlement] would be happy to share the monopoly with Google."

Grimmelmann claims he was part of a recent conference call with Justice Department lawyers, who asked questions about Google's proposed settlement.

Grimmelmann says the Justice Department lawyers didn't indicate what their concerns were. "I have no idea what they're thinking," he says.

Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive, which also digitises books, says his organisation had "multiple conversations" with the Justice Department about the Google plan.

"There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google's ability to solely commercialise this content," Brantley says, adding he hopes the settlement agreement would be rejected by US District Judge Denny Chin.

"We would like the court to say: 'This is fine theoretically, but these orphan books, they don't have anyone to speak for them, so let's take them out of the agreement,'" he says.

Neither Google nor the Justice Department had any immediate comment.

Judge Chin granted a four-month extension on Tuesday to a group of authors deciding whether they want to opt-out or object to the settlement.

The judge set a final settlement hearing on 7 October for court approval. If approved, it would bring to a close an almost four-year long legal challenge of Google's plan to make many of the world's great books searchable online.