A New Chapter in Digitising Literature
Civitas, 9 September 2009
On Tuesday, the European Commission held a hearing to discuss the impact of the ‘Google Books Settlement’ on the EU, writes Ariane Poulain.
Whilst the day-long hearing raised several areas of concern – such as the monopolistic position and censorship power of the mighty search engine – the main revelation appeared to be the recognition of Europe’s primordial position in the domain of digitised media.
The ‘Google Books Settlement’ dates back to 2005 when US authors and publishers sued Google for serious copyright infringement after the company scanned and digitally distributed millions of books from major library collections without the permission of rights holders. The suit ended in October 2008 when a settlement was agreed upon for the publishing company to receive 63% of the revenue made when a book/catalogue is accessed. The settlement also saw US authors and publishers receive $125 million compensation alongside a deal which legally allows Google Books to fully scan and digitise out-of-print and orphaned books. The settlement has yet to be finalised by the court but it is highly likely that it will be approved.
The EU Competitiveness Council requested a hearing in June into the ‘Book Settlement’(Germany, France, and Britain all oppose the settlement) and this week EU Commissioners, opponents and the architect of the Google Books scheme, Dan Clancy, were amongst those who attended Tuesday’s hearing in Brussels. Google offered a major concession to European authors and publishers who objected to the settlement. Prior to the hearing this week, a European book that was out-of-print in the US could be accessed online for free on Google Books, even though it may have been under copyright and commercially available in other countries. The search engine has now pledged that any European books which remain commercially available will not be available on Google Books. Moreover, two posts will be created on Google’s Books Right Registry for European representatives which will serve to oversee the scheme.
As the Guardian argues, the search engine giant ‘has sought to disarm European objections’ because it clearly wants to avoid further legal action against Clancy’s ‘democratisation of information via greater online access’. Opponents in the EU are concerned about censorship, given Google’s power to control the books which are not available online as well as providing them with personal data about individual’s reading habits.
The European Booksellers Foundation (EBF) builds upon these criticisms by arguing that the ‘Google Book Settlement’ has allowed the search-engine giant to increasingly occupy a monopolistic position by dominating the global digital world of books and that they must not be allowed to extend the settlement to the EU; according to the EBF, the ‘agreement is like a Trojan horse on which Google advances to take over the worldwide dissemination of knowledge and culture… Google will occupy a unique gateway position that, if abused, will inevitably create a de facto monopoly… where competition is removed from the market place…[which] cannot, ultimately, be good for the consumer and would be highly damaging for cultural diversity in the EU’.
However, EU Commissioner Clancy denies that Google Books has sought to create a ‘de facto monopoly’ and instead welcomes greater competition in the era of digitised media, ‘one provider is better than none but many is better than one’. The majority of opposition in the EU is due to the belief that if the Google Books Settlement is approved it will harm the European equivalent, ‘Europeana’. However, Europeana is restrained by having to abide by twenty-seven different copyright laws and as a result it currently only provides online access to 5% of the European literature available in national libraries across the regional bloc.
A brief visit to the Europeana website will swiftly demonstrate that it is certainly a far cry from Google Books, particularly as only a few of the accessible books are in English. The European Commissioner for Telecoms and Media, Viviane Reding, recognises the inadequacies of the EU’s advancements in book digitisation and highlights the ‘need to adapt Europe’s very fragmented copyright legislation to the digital age’.
Hence, the EU’s fear about Google Books’ digital expansion could result from its not having the current capacity to compete in the new age of digitised media, rather than its being concerned about the copyright infringement and the growing dominance of the Google search engine. As the Open Rights Group states, the fact ‘that our [Europe’s] literature will soon be more widely available in the US shows how broken this system is’. Member states that oppose the harmonisation of copyright laws in the EU cannot ignore that the traditional mediums of accessing literature are rapidly changing. At a speech in July 2009, I believe Viviane Reding correctly addressed the ‘Google Books Settlement’ when stating that whilst she recognised ‘the fears of many publishers and libraries facing the market power of Google’ she also emphasised that ‘if we do not reform our European copyright rules on orphan works and libraries swiftly, digitisation and the development of attractive content offers will not take place in Europe, but on the other side of the Atlantic’.