Librarians Fighting Google's Book Deal
By Janet Morrissey writing in Time.

Critics of Google's book-searching agreement with publishers and authors were cheered last week when antitrust regulators in the Justice Department set their sights on the search giant's publishing deal, demanding more information.

"This is a monumental settlement that's at stake, and for the government to show this kind of attention is heartening," says Lee Van Orsdel, dean of university libraries at Grand Valley State University. "The increased scrutiny on the part of the DOJ tells us that our concerns are resonating far beyond the library community," concurs Corey Williams, associate director in the office of government relations at the American Library Association. (See pictures of work and life at Google.)

Goliath Google facing off against a legion of librarians and, possibly, the U.S. Justice Department — now there's a fight.

Indeed, a deal that once appeared a sure bet for rubber-stamp approval is now the target of angry opposition and intense regulatory interest, which throw its future into question.
At issue is a $125 million settlement agreement reached last October that gives Google the right to make millions of books available for reading — and purchase — on the Internet.

Under the pact, a Book Rights Registry will be set up that will allow publishers and authors to register their work and get paid for their titles through institutional subscriptions, ad fees and book sales. Google will retain 37% of the revenue, with the remainder going to the registry to be distributed to authors and publishers.

The deal effectively gives authors and publishers control over their work in the digital world and pays them for it. For the public, it means easy click-of-the-mouse access to millions of books that sit on dusty shelves in university libraries across the country.

The agreement, which must still get federal court approval, was aimed at ending two lawsuits filed in 2005 against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. Basically, authors and publishers had complained that the Web-searching king had broken copyright laws when it scanned millions of books from university and research libraries and made snippets of their content available online.

Read the full piece at Time online.