Google book deal deadline extended

 

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By Reuters and Stuart Turton

Posted on 10 Nov 2009 at 15:40

A judge has given Google until the end of the week to revise the terms of its book deal.

The New York court is ruling on a settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, which will see the search giant create a massive repository of digitised books, where authors and publishers can register works and receive a portion of the revenues earned from ads, subscriptions and sales.

Google and the parties agreed to revise the settlement in the face of widespread criticism from competitors and regulators. The US Department of Justice indicated in a court filing that there was a significant chance the deal as written would not pass antitrust muster and could break copyright law.

The settlement is an effort to resolve a 2005 lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and others against Google's effort to scan libraries full of books. In that suit, authors and publishers accused Google of copyright infringement.

Google and the authors and publishers groups had been expected to file the revised settlement on Monday.

The proposed settlement, which was reached last October, would establish a registry to pay authors for works in Google's book search.

Under the terms of the settlement, Google will pay $125 million to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers register works and are paid for books and other publications the search giant would put online.