Tech giants to fight Google book settlement, call it anti-competitive

The three tech giants will join the consortium representing library associations, nonprofit organizations and individuals to oppose Google’s book scanning project, according to a news report in New York Times.

Organization like the New York Library Assn., the Special Libraries Assn. and the American Society of Journalists and Authors have also agreed to take part in the coalition being led by Internet Archive and Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer.
The consortium, tentatively named Open Book Alliance, is likely to issue a joint statement in next couple of weeks.

Google granted right to digitize books last year
Google has been digitizing the works from many major libraries in United States, but in 2005, the search giant came under scanner. The Authors Guild, representing 8000 authors, filed a suit against Google alleging copyright infringement.

The parties reached settlement last October, granting the suit class-action status. As per the $125 million legal settlement, Google was given the right to digitize books that are still in copyright protection but out of print.

Further the copyright holders were allowed to hold 70 percent proceeds from online sale of their books, with Google retaining 30 percent.

Deal is anti-competitive, allege protesting organizations
As Sept. 4, closing date for comments on the settlement, is approaching, a number of organizations have raised concerns, calling the settlement anti-competitive.

Further objections have been raised whether the settlement is fair to authors, whether it violates privacy of people as their reading habits might be tracked, and whether the search giant will gain monopoly by having the exclusive right to digitize millions of out of print books.

"By having a set of organizations speaking together, we can demonstrate the seriousness which we all confront by the issues raised by the proposal,” said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive.

"We are all united in our understanding of the core issues, such as its impact on competitiveness and the threat to reader privacy," Brantley added.

Goggle defends settlement
But the parties in the settlement have argued that the deal is in public good as it would make millions of out of print books available online and provide opportunity to the authors to make money.

Defending the settlement, Google stated, "The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it's understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition."

The Justice Department is investigating the deal for any possible infringement of the Sherman Act, an antitrust law and is scheduled to be reviewed by the court on Oct. 7.