Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon will reportedly join a consortium that will fight the Google Books settlement.
The Google Books deal has gained a new, powerful group of enemies, the competitors that would be most hurt if the deal were to proceed: Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon. Today the New York Times is saying that Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo plan to step up their efforts to oppose the deal, which is currently being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and by the European Commission.
Google’s competitors plan to join a consortium to fight the proposed settlement Google has made with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service.
The sticking point is that the settlement gives exclusive rights to Google for so-called “orphaned books,” books that are covered by copyright protection but whose authors are unknown. This coalition, tentatively called the Open Book Alliance, is expected to go public soon and to file briefs to the DOJ explaining why the deal is anti-competitive.
The fact that Google wants to sell electronic copies of books (for a nice 30% cut, I’m told) is fine and dandy. But Google didn’t write these books. Google didn’t edit and publish these books. Google is entitled to profit in the work it does to digitize and store digital copies of the books. But Google should not wind up with exclusive sales rights for any of them. If an exclusive right must be given for orphaned books, those rights should be held by libraries or other non-profit organizations (such as universities).
In 2005, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google, for copyright infringement over scanning books without always paying for the rights to do so. Google entered into a tentative $125 million settlement in last October which would give Google the rights to proceed. The DOJ hearing on the matter will take place October 7.
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