NEW YORK--The disparate and dissenting constituencies that showed up to federal court here on Thursday to comment on a plan by Google to create a digital library illustrated just how polarizing and far reaching the effort has become.
Crowded onto courtroom benches, foreign dignitaries sat side-by-side with cane-wielding advocates for the blind, college professors, literary agents, authors of children's books, and, of course, lots and lots of lawyers. The gallery at the federal court house here filled not one but two rooms (one room watched the proceedings via close-circuit TV).
The one thing that almost all in attendance shared was a passionate view of the settlement proposal that would authorize Google to create a vast digital library. After long negotiations, Google has reached an agreement with book publishers and authors that would allow Google to display digital snippets of out-of-print books still covered by copyright. Representatives from the companies appeared before U.S. District Judge Denny Chin to seek approval for the deal.
Perhaps best known for presiding over the Bernie Madoff securities-fraud case, Chin is now tasked with determining whether the settlement is fair to authors, publishers, Google's competitors, and the public. Chin told the court that he would rule sometime in the future, but before he did he would allow a long list of stakeholders, which included the U.S. Department of Justice, to comment on the proposal.
Supporters of the settlement told Chin that Google was preparing to usher in an era of free-flowing information like the world has never seen. Google could help span the digital divide and hand countless people better access to information if the company is allowed to create a digital archive, said Lateef Mtima, a law professor at Howard University and director of the school's Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice.
Mtima urged the judge to help Google provide the underprivileged with "equal access" to information. "Copyright was intended to be an engine of cultural development, not a brake," he said.
Several other educators spoke in support of the settlement, including Paul Courant, a professor at the University of Michigan who oversees the school's libraries. He said that digitizing books frees knowledge from the restrictions of geographical location. Courant noted that to read any of the university's books, a person must physically be in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the school is located.
"Broad social progress depends on being able to find, use, and re-use the scholarly record," Courant told the court. Google's plan to scan books is "one solution," he said.
Still, this was a day where the number of settlement opponents who addressed the court outnumbered supporters 3 to 1. Chin heard plenty about what some claimed were numerous weaknesses in the settlement.
Detractors claimed Google's plan poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy of book readers. Several authors argued that the agreement would desolate copyright law. Competitors, such as Microsoft and Amazon, said the settlement is an attempt by Google to snatch an unfair advantage, primarily by setting itself up as the all-powerful emperor of digital information.
Nothing drew more fire than the settlement's plans to force authors to "opt out" in order to prevent Google from scanning snippets of their books. Critics say that Google has everything backward here. They ask why is it that authors must go out of their way to opt out to prevent Google from exploiting their work?
Doesn't copyright law already require that they give their permission before someone can license their work?
William Cavanaugh, an assistant U.S. attorney general told Chin that the publishers and the Authors Guild do not have a right to enable a third party such as Google to use an author's work without their permission. "This (settlement) has the effect of rewriting contracts," said Cavanaugh, who also told the judge the government's continues to investigate whether the agreement violates antitrust laws.
One of the other major concerns for some in courtroom was privacy. As Irene Pakuscher, speaking on behalf of the German government, told Chin that the settlement would negatively impact German authors and publishers, one of her countrymen elsewhere in the courtroom whispered to a reporter that many Germans just didn't trust Google.
Mathias Schneider, who was covering the hearing for ARD German Radio, said in his experience many Germans were very skeptical of Google's data collection ambitions. "In my country, many people still remember the damage can be done from gathering too much information about individuals," Schneider said, cautioning that he didn't speak for ARD. "There was the Nazis and then it happened with the former German Democratic Republic, or East Germany."
The GDR government was known for widespread spying on citizens.
Representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Center for Democracy & Technology described worrisome scenarios whereby people who used Google's proposed service to read a sexually explicit book or some other controversial title and Google would have a record of it. In addition, Google would have the ability to log even the pages the person read.
At the conclusion of the hearing, attorneys for Google and the book publishers and authors told Chin that the settlement isn't perfect but is fair. Google's attorney told the court that the company is indeed interested in getting its hands on rights to so-called "orphan works," the term used to describe titles where the author isn't known or can be found.
The question of properly compensating someone who is entitled to compensation under Google's plan but may not be aware of it has been a hot issue. Google said that the money earned from orphan works is what will make the digital library a feasible business. Google's attorney said that others, such as Microsoft, who attempted to digitize books couldn't monetize their efforts this way and that's why they failed.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10456382-261.html
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