Alexander
Fiedler
Assignment for November 15, 2010
The Google Books Project
This assignment intends to give you an idea about the Google Books settlement, the compatibility of Google's project with US copyright law in the absence of a settlement, some knowledge about the "orphan" books discussion and an insight in competition issues. Also, we take a brief look to what Germany and Europe think of the Google Books project.
I. Introduction
Background
Google Books is a service, that scans books, converts the pages to text using optical character recognition and enables users to perform full-text queries. Up to the present day, more than 15 million books have been scanned (source - optional).
In September 2005, the Author's Guild filed a class action suit for copyright infringements against Google in the Southern District of New York. In October 2005, the Association of American Publishers also brought a lawsuit against Google. In October 2008, the parties proposed a settlement agreement, which was amended in November 2009. The approval of the amended settlement agreement is still pending. In the US Department of Justice's opinion, the settlement is "an attempt to use the class-action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation" (Statement of Interest of the United States - optional). In February 2010, the court held a Fairness Hearing. Judge Denny Chin has not yet issued a final ruling.
Even if the court decides to reject the settlement, Google will very likely continue to provide snippet previews of in-copyright books and the Authors Guild will have to decide, whether to drop the case or to press on with the litigation. Also, Congress could be asked to reslove this matter.
When you read the assigned texts, you may want to think about questions like the following ones:
- From an author's point of view, do you think Google should be allowed to run the Google Books project? Imagine you are a policymaker - does that change your opinion about the project?
- What is your opinion on the orphan books issue? Should their use be prohibited? Is there a solution, suiting Google, the authors and the public? Is public interest a valid argument at all, considering that public interet is already taken into account by having a time-limit on copyright?
- Are you concerned about competition issues if the Google settlement is approved?
- Are class action settlements the right way to resolve the issue?
- Are governments outside the US rightly concerned about Google's project and the settlement?
- The Google Books settlement has influence on authors abroad. Is that just an inevitable consequence of the internet as a global network or is there another way?
- Imagine the settlement were amended to completely exclude works by non-US authors. What would the practical impact be?
II. The Google Books Settlement
III. International Consequences