Concerns Remain Over Google Books Settlement

Google and organizations representing book publishers have revised their settlement agreement regarding Google's planned move to scan in and provide digital versions of published works from libraries and other organizations. Critics, however, say the new agreement does not settle issues related to foreign works or works whose authors can not immediately be discerned.

In the revised book settlement between Google and representatives of the publishing industry, including the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild, Google and the representatives of the book publishers agreed to terms that allow Google to digitize and sell copyrighted books.

However, the settlement, which was signed on Friday and which can be read by clicking here, is still being criticized by a number of groups as still not ensuring that copyright holders are fairly compensated.

Google was sued by the representatives of publishing rights holders in 2005 over alleged copyright violations related to Google's plan to digitize out-of-print books and make them available on the Internet through its Google Books library.

The two sides settled in October 2008, with Google agreeing that it would pay $125 million to the rights holders and restrict digitization of certain books that were out of print but are still protected by copyright.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice, Google competitors such as Microsoft and Amazon, and foreign publishers opposed the settlement because of concerns about how to fairly pay copyright holders of works still under copyright protection for sales of the digitized versions of the books.

In Friday's revised agreement, Google is authorized to sell individual books, sell subscriptions to institutional subscribers such as libraries and education institutions, and do other commercial activities with the books as long as it pays 70 percent of its revenue from the digitized versions of the books.

Those payments will be made to the Registry, a not-for-profit organization to be set up by the publishers' representatives to locate the rights holders of the books and ensure they are paid for sales of their books.

Google will also pay a minimum of $45 million into a fund to pay royalties on books digitized on or before May 5, as well as $34.5 million to fund the launch and administrative costs of the Registry.

Despite the revised agreement, concerns about Google's plans to digitize published works still remain.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Justice Department is concerned that the agreement does not adequately address the issue of orphaned works, or published works whose legal rights owners cannot be identified. There is also concern about how the agreement appears to give immunity from being sued by those rights holders.

The technology Web site Ars Technica also said that the proposed agreement focuses on the rights of authors in a few English-speaking to the exclusion of much of the rest of the world.

Chad Berndtson contributed to this article.

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