Google can’t scan all the world’s novels and make them available online, a judge said Tuesday . Using copyright and antitrust arguments, Google’s opponents successfully overturned a $125 million deal between Google and the publishing industry to complete the project. The negotiation could nevertheless be approved in the future, based on recommendations made by the judge issuing the ruling. Resource for this article – Google Books ruling based on copyright and antitrust concerns by MoneyBlogNewz.
What Google Books settled on
Google Books is an effort to scan every book ever published and make them available to everyone with an Internet connection. Due to the book-scanning project, Google got sued in 2005 by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. In 2008, Google agreed to pay $125 million up front and provide the means for authors and publishers to get paid any time their books are viewed online. The negotiation has been mired in the legal system as opponents such as Amazon, Microsoft, the Justice Department, copyright experts and some foreign governments argued against it. Denny Chin is the Manhattan federal court. On Tuesday, he said that it wouldn't be right for Google Books to do this because it would create a monopoly and exploit the works of copyright holders without permission.
The orphan works issue
Google Books would be able to digitize any book without permission unless the author and publisher opted out of the agreement because of a provision with Judge Chin objected to the most. Chin suggested that changing the provision to “opt in” could open the door to approval. The opt-out provision was written because of an issue with so-called “orphan works.”. Anytime a book has a copyright holder that cannot be found or is unknown, it’s an orphan work. According to Google, requiring an opt in leaves millions of orphan works out of Google Books, out of print and unavailable — exactly the issue Google Books was created to solve. Opponents of the settlement said the availability of orphan works is an issue best addressed by Congress, not the negotiation of a private lawsuit.
Issues on all of the antitrust
Google defends its book-scanning project as an effort to “democratize knowledge” by offering every book ever written, which is about 130 million and counting, in accordance with the business. Antitrust issues are there also though. Nobody would be able to compete with such a complete library as Google would have with this program. Other critics of Google Books said offering exclusive access to millions of novels would put Google in an unassailable position in Internet search. As the battle goes on, Google has scanned about 15 million novels. There are about 20 percent of copyrighted titles available on Google that the business licensed from publishers. Also, Google's Book Search has expired copyrighted novels accessible. Sample text can be accessed from copyrighted titles that haven’t been licensed to Google.
Information from
New York Times
nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Financial Times
ft.com/cms/s/2/f7ee4948-54bf-11e0-b1ed-00144feab49a.html#axzz1HR3IHDr1
PC World
pcworld.com/article/222963/judge_rejects_google_book_deal_over_monopoly_concerns.html
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