U.S. writers’ groups team up to protest Google settlement

With the Jan. 28 opt-out deadline fast approaching, three major U.S. writers’ groups – The National Writers Union, The American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction Writers of America – have sent a joint letter to more than 60 members of Congress condemning the recently amended Google Book Search settlement proposal. It’s a notable break with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, both of which are working with Google on the settlement.

The three dissenting organizations seem to be specifically targeting Congressmen who are authors themselves. From the letter:

The ramifications of the amended settlement for any one author and any one book are exceptionally complex. We’ve talked to our members, authors like yourself. The ones who got the notice found it incomprehensible and just shook their heads in confusion. Go to the settlement website’s poorly implemented database and see for yourself how tricky this is – has your book been scanned? Is it commercially available?  Should you opt out? If you do nothing, you’re automatically included in the settlement. If you opt out, Google doesn’t even guarantee that it won’t steal your work in the future.

It isn’t fair.  There are millions of book authors in this country who could be locked into an agreement they don’t understand and didn’t ask for. The Authors Guild represents only a tiny fraction of published writers, yet the new regulatory board set up in the proposed settlement will override individual book contracts – not to mention common law and even the Constitutional protection of copyright. Mary Beth Peters, Register of Copyrights, testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the settlement would “turn copyright on its head.” Nothing in the revised U.S.settlement changes that.

Google backs away from public debate over Book Search settlement

Now that Google has amended its proposed Book Search settlement and made numerous concessions to its critics, you’d think it might be more open to publicly discussing the settlement. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, however, the corporate giant pulled out of a chance to “publicly wrangle” with the Open Book Alliance on an episode of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last Monday.

Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy had agreed to appear on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to debate the topic with Harvard professor Robert Darnton. With little notice, however, Silicon Valley attorney Gary Reback was added to the line up.

Reback spearheaded the antitrust crusade against Microsoft last decade and, by the way, co-chairs the Open Books Alliance, whose members include Google competitors Yahoo, Microsoft, and Amazon.com.

Apparently Google didn’t want an engineer to spar with a lawyer on national television.

Google’s day of reckoning

Authors who wish to opt out of the Google Book Search settlement have until midnight tonight to do so. If you’re an author, and you’re still undecided about what to do, here’s some previous Q&Q coverage that might help:

• Canadian authors mount last-minute opposition to Google Book Search settlement
• A Google Book Search settlement primer

Also, here’s the official settlement page, and the full Settlement Agreement.

U.S. Justice Department to investigate Google settlement

The Google book search settlement (for background, see here and here) faces yet another hurdle. The New York Times is reporting today that the U.S. Justice Department has confirmed its intention to investigate whether or not the settlement violates American antitrust laws. According to the Times:

“The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act,” wrote William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general. “At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition. However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry.”

Antitrust experts said the letter was the latest indication that the Justice Department is seriously examining complaints that the agreement would grant Google an unfair monopoly over millions of so-called “orphan works,” books whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.

The U.S. government has been given a deadline of Sept. 18 to present its views, which will be considered at a fairness hearing scheduled for Oct. 7.

This week in Google news

Depending on how you look at it, this week’s breaking news regarding the Google Book Search settlement is either good news for libraries or another example of the Internet giant’s bullying tactics. In an agreement signed with the University of Michigan, one of Google’s largest scanning partners, the library will gain more say in how much Google charges for access to its digital catalogue. The New York Times reports:

The new agreement, which Google hopes other libraries will endorse, lets the University of Michigan object if it thinks the prices Google charges libraries for access to its digital collection are too high, a major concern of some librarians. Any pricing dispute would be resolved through arbitration.

The only catch is that in order to have a say, libraries must allow Google to scan copright-protected books from off of their shelves.

The American Library Association, which has asked the court to oversee aspects of the settlement, said the new agreement is a step in the right direction but is insufficient to ensure that Google does not set artificially high prices for its digital collection.

“Any library must have the ability to request that the judge review the pricing should a dispute arise,” said Corey Williams, associate director at the association’s Washington office.

Elsewhere on the Web, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle is – not surprisingly – opposed to the settlement, calling it nothing short of a “book grab” in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Whereas the original lawsuit could have helped define fair use in the digital age, the settlement provides a new and unsettling form of media consolidation.

If approved, the settlement would produce not one but two court-sanctioned monopolies. Google will have permission to bring under its sole control information that has been accessible through public institutions for centuries. In essence, Google will be privatizing our libraries.

New Web forum will look at Google Book Search settlement

A new project is underway to foster public discussion about the ramifications of the Google Book Search settlement, the New York Law School announced this week.

The initiative will see the launch of a new website later this month, known as the Public Index, that will include discussion forums, an archive of documents related to the settlement, and a tool that will enable users to share commentary on aspects of the proposed settlement. The group will also submit an “open-source amicus brief” to the court overseeing the lawsuit and is organizing a conference to coincide with the recently rescheduled Oct. 7 fairness hearing in New York.

The project is being staffed by NYLS law students under the leadership of Professor James Grimmelmann, a prominent legal commentator on the Google settlement in the U.S. and the author of the frequently cited article “How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement.” Blink while reading the official release, however, and you may miss that the project is being underwritten by Google competitor Microsoft.

From the NYLS release:

“The Public Index will respond to the enormous public interest in the lawsuit by providing both high-quality information about the issues and a forum for the public to make their own voices heard,” Professor Grimmelmann said.

(Thanks to MobyLives for the tip.)

Bookmarks: the new large-format Kindle, layoffs at Waterstone’s, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Rumours abound that the launch of a new, big-screen Kindle is only days away
• Waterstone’s, the U.K.’s largest book retailer, cuts up to 650 positions
• The Toronto Star offers a glowing profile of the New York-based Canadian art director Leanne Shapton, whose latest book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, has been optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company
• Director Ron Howard claims that the Vatican interfered with the filming of Angels & Demons
• Google’s book scanning “secret”
  
• Revamping book clubs for the 21st-century

Yet more developments in the Google Book Search settlement

In response to the rallying opposition to the Google Book Search settlement, a federal judge in New York has extended the opt-out deadline, giving authors an additional four months to consider Google’s terms.

As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. Justice Department has also opened an antitrust investigation into Google’s actions. Mobylives reports:

The probe seems to be focussed on the fact that, as a Reuters wire story reports, the settlement “would allow Google – and only Google – to digitize so-called orphan works” and sell access to them. Orphan works are books that are out of print, but still in copyright. (Reuters is not correct when it indicates that it is unclear who owns copyrights in this situation – often, ownership is clear, as we here at Melville House can attest about several books we’ve brought back into print that are available now through Google Books.)

“There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google’s ability to solely commercialize this content,” commented Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive. IA also digitizes books, and Brantley “said his organization had ‘multiple conversations’ with the Justice Department about the Google plan,” according to Reuters.

New developments in Google Book Search settlement

A more organized opposition to the Google Book Search settlement is beginning to emerge in advance of the fast-approaching May 5 opt-out deadline. (For more details on the settlement, see here.)

Last week, a small coalition of copyright holders, including the estates of John Steinbeck and Philip K. Dick, asked federal court judge Dennis Chin to extend the opt-out deadline by four months. (Google and the Authors Guild, one of the instigators of the original class-action lawsuit, countered on Friday in a joint fax suggesting a more realistic extension of two months). According to the group’s lawyers, copyright holders affected by the lawsuit need more time to digest the 334-page report and to assess the potentially “explosive” commercial potential for  scanned titles in the digital domain, Wired reports.

“For authors who do not opt out, the settlement if approved would impose a complex scheme for the wholesale allocation of rights and remedies, and compensation for exploitation of those rights, in the digital world,” the group’s lawyers wrote. “And it would cement that scheme in perpetuity in an area of commerce that has seen explosive growth in just the last five years, and that may well prove to be the most important and valuable channel for the distribution and exploitation of creative works.”

Elsewhere it’s being reported that an attempt by rival book-scanning venture Internet Archive to intervene in the lawsuit has been thrown out by Chin. The non-profit coalition, which has a massive scanning facility located at the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library, had sent  a letter to the court last week requesting an amendment to the proposed settlement that would give other scanning initiatives “the same protections over orphan works that would be granted to Google under the terms of the settlement,” The Bookseller reports. Chin declined the request, ensuring Google’s virtual monopoly to scan and profit from so-called “orphan” works – books that fall into a grey area of copyright law.

Etiquette advice for Google Book Search

Dan Blacharski, a columnist for ITworld.com, has weighed in on the Microsoft vs. Google book search debate, pointing out that while it is fashionable to bash Microsoft as a corporate bully, the Microsoft Live Book Search system treats copyright holders more fairly than Google Book Search does, because Microsoft only “displays books that are past their copyright, or have been specifically authorized by the copyright holder.”

The big question is that do I, as a creator of content and writer of books, have a problem with my books being on Google Book Search? It’s a tough question. When a library carries one of my books, they have purchased it from the publisher, and I get my fifty cents worth of royalty payment. But a library makes that book available only to a local community; if an online library makes a book available in digital form to the entire world, there should be adequate compensation to the author. But as I said, that’s not what Google is doing. They are, however, providing a summary, table of contents, title page, index, and copyright page, a link to buy the book, and a place to search the book. Search results will show snippets of text, maybe a few paragraphs, related to the search. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like such an egregious imposition on my rights, and it may help me sell a few books in the process. The grey area comes in deciding whether Google has a right to scan and index those books without permission from the publisher. Publishers may well decide it’s to their advantage to grant permission-but it would be more fair for Google to seek out that permission before scanning.

A Google feature in TIME magazine last year reported that the company’s founders use the informal corporate motto “don’t be evil.” Perhaps they also should add a corollary from everybody’s mom: “And always ask politely before you borrow something.”