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Google Deadline on Book Scanning Stuns Publishers

Posted on: Monday, 15 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

Aug. 13--Google's ambitious project launched last year to scan all sorts of books to make their contents available on the Internet set publishers snarling. Google's solution to the controversy has publishers snarling even more.

The Mountain View company has suspended the scanning but has given publishers until November to say which copyright material it can't use. That angered publishers, who say the Internet search engine is trying to upend copyright law.

Google wants to make digital copies of some of the world's largest university library collections, including Harvard and Stanford, available through its search engine.

Experts in intellectual property say the spat is another example of the way the Internet is changing how information, from music to published works, is distributed. And it represents a clash between deliberate-moving traditional media and fast-changing Internet technology.

"It shines a spotlight on legal procedures that were built for a print world," said Chuck Richard, lead analyst with Outsell, a market research firm for information companies. "People couldn't foresee the advent of electronic" information.

Publishers say Google wants to use their copyrighted works to drive more traffic to its Web site. And they fear it could lead to the sort of pirating of works that has afflicted the music industry.

Google defended its project as a benefit to all parties. "These copies are permitted under copyright law," said a Google spokesman in an e-mail interview Friday. "By participating in the Google Print program and making the full text of their books searchable via Google, publishers and authors can attract new readers and increase book sales."

In recent weeks, the Mountain View company has been negotiating to resolve the dispute with the Association of American Publishers, the trade organization of major book publishers, said Pat Schroeder, the group's president and chief executive. In July, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt met with the group in New York, she said.

The association was in the process of finalizing its proposed compromise when Google grew impatient and asked to see a preview of it, Schroeder said. After reviewing it this week, she added, "they said, 'No, we don't think that will work.' "

Late Thursday night, in a company Web posting, Google notified publishers and authors that they must contact the company by November if they don't want their copyrighted material scanned.

In the posting, Google's print product manager, Adam Smith, wrote: "So now, any and all copyright holders . . . can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November."

Publishers were taken aback and say that puts too much burden on copyright holders. "Think of the precedent of that -- for movies, for software, for anything in the intellectual property realm," Schroeder said. "Everybody has the right to copy everything unless the rights holder finds you and says, 'No.' It puts the onus on the rights owner."

Though she would not say what the association plans to do, intellectual property experts believe the dispute could be headed to court.

"From a copyright point of view, unless they obtain a license from the copyright owner for works that are still protected by a copyright, it's an infringing act to digitize and post the work on the Internet," said Cydney Tune, who heads the copyright and media and entertainment industry teams at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in San Francisco.

"If they proceed to include in this project works for which they do not have permission," she added, "they can be sued."

Experts, though, believe it is in the interest of all media to come to terms with the digital age with new business models for distributing content.

"That's where most of the problems occur," said Owen Sloane, an attorney who specializes in intellectual property with the law firm Berger Kahn in Marina del Rey. "It takes a long time to figure that out. And the digital world moves so quickly."

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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