September 21, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Why Google's latest venture may not, after all, be the last word in books

 
It sounds like a booklover's dream. That copy of The Little Green Road to Fairyland you had as a child and your mother threw out, the one that now costs a small fortune from a rare books' dealer, could be back in your possession for a few dollars and a short wait at the 21st century's answer to the medieval printing press.
 
Google, the internet search-engine giant which, since 2004, has been scanning millions of old books and storing them online, has teamed up with On Demand Books, a company founded specifically to develop a low-cost, automatic book printer. The idea was that any library or bookshop in the world could produce a quality paperback from its digital depository, at the point of sale. Likening it to a custom cup of quickly prepared, high-grade coffee, ODB called its brainchild, the Espresso Book Machine. 'Time' magazine called it one of the 'Best Inventions of 2007'.  Now, for an outlay of about $100,000, your EBM comes with access to Google's unrivalled backlist.   
 
But not everyone is happy. Google, with its raison d'être to disseminate knowledge on a global scale, may have ridden a little too roughshod over the rights of authors - and in some cases their descendants - in its bid to create the world's biggest virtual library. Four years ago, two separate lawsuits were brought by the Authors' Guild and a group of publishers, led by McGraw Hill, claiming that Google had not respected copyrights. While Universities from Germany to Japan continued to add their manuscripts to Google's Book Search digitization project - as it was now called - the legal arguments in the United States became the focal point for those who saw the downside of it all:  the monopoly being created, the competence of the company properly to archive such vast amounts of literature, the loss of ownership by the creators and original distributors of the works, and - from European countries in particular - concern at the preponderance of books in English.
 
Google found itself in trouble not for books which were so old that they had gone out of copyright, nor for so-called 'orphaned' books, where the author or publisher could not be found for permission to be obtained; it came a cropper scanning books which had gone out of print, but were still under copyright. In October 2008, it offered a compromise:  $125 million to settle the infringement issues and the plaintiffs' legal bills, plus the creation of a Book Rights Registry, giving all rights' holders of out-of-print books until January 5, 2010, to submit a claim.  In exchange, Google would be able to index the disputed works, quote from them and take a cut of their digital sale.
 
Almost a year on, no ruling has been made. In any case, the German and French governments say it would be unlawful for a decision made in the U.S. to apply in Europe, and a federal judge in New York is currently considering an application by the American Justice Department for Google's offer to be rejected.  Whichever way you look at it, the book does not yet stop here./ENDS