NY Suit vs. Google Seeks Damages for Pictures, Art

 

NEW YORK (AP) - Groups representing photographers and artists on Wednesday accused Internet search leader Google of copyright infringement in a lawsuit that mirrors complaints book publishers and authors have made for years about the company's attempt to create the world's largest digital library.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, seeks up to $150,000 in damages for each of tens of thousands of photographs, illustrations and graphic works that it said were copied, stored and electronically displayed without permission from copyright holders.

"Google is engaging in massive copyright infringement," claimed the lawsuit, which said Google "will continue its brazen acts of willful copyright infringement" unless stopped by the court.

Lawyers for Google Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif., didn't immediately respond to telephone messages and e-mails sent Wednesday.

The lawsuit adds a new wrinkle to the dispute over whether Google should be allowed to preside over and profit from the world's largest digital library.

A judge in Manhattan has not ruled whether to accept a $125 million settlement of a 5-year-old lawsuit groups representing authors and publishers brought against the company.

The deal would let Google include in its library so-called orphan works - out-of-print books whose writers' could not be located - and the works of other authors who decline to opt-out of the agreement after learning about it.

The U.S. Department of Justice has said the settlement might violate antitrust laws. The deal is opposed by some Google rivals, consumer watchdogs, academic experts, literary agents and even foreign governments.

A lawyer for Google has said fewer than 10 million books of 174 million books in the world would be affected by the settlement; about half the 10 million books were out of print.

The new lawsuit said Google has scanned more than 12 million books and may eventually scan the rest of the 174 million books, along with periodicals. It said Google's plans will diminish the value of pictures and art in the books, causing the photographers and artists to lose profits and opportunities and have their reputations damaged.

The lawsuit's plaintiffs include the American Society of Media Photographers Inc., with more than 7,000 members; the Graphic Artists Guild; the Picture Archive Council of America Inc.; the North American Nature Photography Association and the Professional Photographers of America, which has more than 20,000 members in 54 countries.

NYC Judge Expresses Doubts About Google Deal

Google digital library faces outcry at NYC hearing

NEW YORK (AP) - A judge Thursday questioned whether Google and lawyers for authors and publishers went too far when they struck a deal that would let the gigantic search engine make money presiding over the world's largest digital library.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin put lawyers who reached the $125 million settlement on the defensive as he presided over a fairness hearing in a packed Manhattan courtroom where opponents of the agreement spent several hours urging him to reject it or demand changes. He did not immediately rule.

When the lawyers who completed revisions on the deal in the fall took their turn to speak, Chin questioned why the settlement gave Google publishing rights well into the future rather than merely rectifying any harm that led authors and publishers to sue it five years ago.

"Usually it's a release of claims based on what's happened in the past. Usually you don't have a release of claims based on future conduct. Why is this case different?" Chin asked Michael J. Boni, a lawyer for authors.

Boni agreed that the case was unusual but insisted the deal was fair despite objections by Google rivals, consumer watchdogs, academic experts, literary agents and even foreign governments.

The judge said it seemed akin to a settlement in a discrimination action containing wording that says: "I'm releasing you now from discriminating against me in the future."

He also seemed to take the side of some of Google's stiffest critics, including the U.S. Department of Justice, when he noted that many of those protesting the deal would disappear if the company was required to get agreements from authors before letting their works be used.

As the deal stands, Google would be able to use so-called "orphan works" - out-of-print books whose writers' could not be located - and the works of other authors who declined to opt-out of the agreement after learning about it.

"I would surmise that Google wants the orphan books and that's what this is about," Chin said.

Boni said attempts by the litigants to notify authors had already caused 620,000 out-of-print books that some would call orphan books to be claimed by 40,000 authors. So far, Google has scanned about 10 million books.

"When there is money waiting for them, they come forward at a very high rate," he said.

Boni's remarks came after a stream of people opposing the deal each spoke for about 5 minutes, leading Boni to begin by saying: "I feel a little bit like Rocky getting beaten around the head and face for 15 rounds."

Minutes earlier, U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General William F. Cavanaugh took his swings, saying the Justice Department was continuing an investigation and believed the agreement might violate antitrust laws.

He said Google had used the settlement to give it rights it never negotiated for, "essentially rewriting people's contracts."

"It produces benefits to Google that Google could not achieve in the marketplace because of the existence of orphan works," Cavanaugh said.

Still, Cavanaugh said the Justice Department "recognizes and applauds the objectives of mass digitization. Our concern is that this is not the appropriate vehicle to achieve those objectives."

Attorney Daralyn J. Durie, speaking for Google Inc., which is based in Mountain View, Calif., said provisions of the deal requiring authors to opt-out if they don't want their books scanned rather than requiring Google to first get each rightholder's approval was not an issue the company could be flexible on.

"There would be no settlement. There is no other way to create a market for these out-of-print works so they can become available and so the rightholders can be located," she said.

"Microsoft abandoned their scanning project. They couldn't figure out a way to make it commercially viable," she said.

Chin at one point cited critics who say the deal gives Google too many rights and he added that it did seem to go beyond where prior law had in the past allowed cases to go.

Before the lawyers took their turn, Chin heard from about two dozen speakers, the majority asking that the settlement be changed or rejected.

"It's not going to be a great library, it's going to be a great store," said Sarah Canzoneri, a member of the Children's Book Guild and plaintiff in a lawsuit by authors and publishers.

Marc Mauer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, said the audio capabilities of Google's system "will give us access to 10 million books."

Andrew DeVore, a lawyer for folk singer Arlo Guthrie and "Pay it Forward" writer Catherine Ryan Hyde, said the library would exploit his clients with "woefully inadequate compensation" for "unknown and undisclosed uses."

The hearing put technology giants at odds: A lawyer for Sony Corp., which makes electronic book readers, said the company supports Google's effort because it would promote competition. But an attorney for Microsoft Corp. complained that it would give Google an unfair advantage.

The proposed settlement "was structured to solidify Google's dominance," said Tom Rubin, the Microsoft lawyer.

Other opponents said they were worried about Google's unchecked ability to track users' reading habits and collect data on them.

The deal "raises very serious privacy concerns," said John Morris, an attorney for the Center for Democracy & Technology.

France and Germany, which oppose the settlement, noted they support a European book-scanning project, Europeana, because it is in compliance with their laws and requires permission from copyright holders before books are scanned.

Irene Pakuscher, speaking for the government of Germany, said Germany "strenuously supports the creation of digital libraries" but said the settlement should be limited to U.S. authors and publishers.

Cynthia Arato, a lawyer for the New Zealand Society of Authors, said opposition to the settlement was so strong in European countries that its approval would place severe diplomatic stress on the United States and lead to calls for trade sanctions.

She said its approval would be "virtually certain to become the most controversial class action settlement ever to emanate from the United States."

David Nimmer, a lawyer for Amazon.com Inc., told Chin the agreement allowed "full scale commercial exploitation with essentially no restraint whatsoever."

He added: "It turns copyright law on its head."

Durie said Google disputed the notion.

"This does not turn copyright law on its head," she said. "We firmly believe that it constitutes fair use and is permissible under copyright law."

She said there was no "present danger that Google will monopolize the market for e-books" because the company currently had no market. She said competitors were trying to keep the company out of the market.

Durie said fewer than 10 million books of 174 million books in the world would be affected by the settlement, about 5 million of which were out-of-print works.

She said the settlement provides a mechanism to access out-of-print books.

"One way to get something is certainly better than no way to get them at all. One distribution channel is a lot better than none," she said.

Summary: Google Continues Book Battle with DOJ

AP

WHO'S SMARTER?: Google Inc. believes it can convince a federal judge that it has a better grasp on antitrust and copyright law than the U.S. Department of Justice.

WHAT'S AT STAKE: The Internet search leader is seeking the digital rights to millions of hard-to-find books to make them more accessible. It has reached a settlement with publishers, but the Justice Department and others object.

THE DECISION MAKER: U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in New York.

WHAT'S NEXT: Chin is scheduled to hear arguments Feb. 18.

Google Fined Per Day In France Over Copyright Issues

USA Today

PARIS — A Paris court ruled Friday that Google's expansion into digital books breaks France's copyright laws, and a judge slapped the Internet search leader with a $14,300-a-day fine until it stops showing literary snippets.

Besides being fined for each day in violation, Google was ordered to pay $430,000 in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere, which brought the case on behalf of a group of French publishers.

Google attorney Alexandra Neri said the company would appeal.

The decision erects another legal barrier that may prevent Google from realizing its 5-year-old goal of scanning all the world's books into a digital library accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

A U.S. legal settlement that would give Google the digital rights to millions of books is in limbo because U.S. regulators have warned a federal judge in New York that the arrangement probably would thwart competition in the budding electronic book market and compromise copyrights, as well.

The top U.S. copyright official and the governments in Germany and France also have raised objections about that settlement overstepping its bounds. Google is trying to address the critics with a revised settlement that is still under court review.

The French case is relatively small in comparison. It didn't even seem to faze investors as Google shares gained $2.48 to $596.42.

Still, the ruling served as a reminder that Google's ambitious push into other markets beyond Internet search increasingly is clashing with fears the Mountain View, Calif., company is getting too powerful.

As part of the backlash, Google has been depicted as a copyright scofflaw that prospers off the content of others — a portrayal the company's management insists is totally off base.

The head of the French publisher's union applauded Friday's verdict.

"It shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can't do whatever they want," said Serge Eyrolles, president of France's Syndicat National de l'Edition. He said Google had scanned 100,000 French books into its database, 80% of which were under copyright.

Eyrolles said French publishers would still like to work with Google to digitize their books, "but only if they stop playing around with us and start respecting intellectual property rights."

Philippe Colombet, the head of Google's book-scanning project in France, said the company disagrees with the court's ruling.

"French readers now face the threat of losing access to a significant body of knowledge and falling behind the rest of Internet users," Colombet said in a conference call with reporters. "We believe that displaying a limited number of short extracts from books complies with copyright legislation both in France and the U.S. — and improves access to books."

Colombet declined to answer questions about whether Google would remove the books from its database or pay the fine. "We are going to study the judgment carefully over the coming days," he said.

The judgment will have little or no effect on Internet users outside of France. And French books that are in Google's database with publishers' consent will remain searchable, even in France. Colombet could not say how many French books Google has scanned overall, or how many French publishers allowing Google to show its works.

Google has scanned more than 10 million books worldwide since 2004, including 2 million with the consent of about 30,000 publishers, About 9,000 of those publishers are in Europe, Colombet said. Another 2 million books in Google's library no longer are in copyright. Google has been only showing snippets from the remaining books while it tries to iron out copyright disputes.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made catching up on France's digital delay one of the national priorities by earmarking euro750 million (about $1 billion) of a euro35 billion spending plan announced earlier this week for digitizing France's libraries, film and music archives and other repositories of the nation's recorded heritage.

Earlier this week a consortium of French technology companies announced a plan to create a book scanning project they said would be better than Google's, but only in three years time.

Web Site Has Read On Digital Books
Story from SiliconValley.com

Scribd is proposing to do for books what iTunes did for music — let readers buy only what they want to read.

Eight years ago, Apple turned the music industry upside-down when it launched iTunes, an online music store that let listeners cherry-pick one or two songs instead of having to buy an entire album. Now Scribd is giving readers the option of buying content, including paying a few dollars for a chapter or two from a travel guide or a how-to book.

That's just one example of the flexibility that digital book purveyors are experimenting with as printed content migrates to the digital format. Another is the pricing model. Paperbacks largely have been priced about $10 to $15, while hardcovers are $25 to $30. With digital books, that price could be any amount. Scribd takes 20 percent of whatever price publishers and authors set for their works; the rest goes to the writer or publisher. Some authors, for example, are releasing their books on Scribd for $2.

One of them is Kemble Scott, a 46-year-old San Francisco writer whose first book, "SoMa," was published as a trade paperback in 2007. For his second book, "The Sower," Scott eschewed print and decided to debut his novel on Scribd as a $2 digital book.

Scott chose the digital route for its immediacy. His thriller includes a number of contemporary references such as swine flu and Susan Boyle, a Scottish singer who rose to media stardom on the wings of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. "Publishing a book the traditional way can take a year to 18 months from the time you find a publisher to the time it ends up on store shelves," Scott said.