Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo joined an alliance on Wednesday opposing the legal settlement that would allow Google to digitize and sell millions of books in a move the Internet giant dismissed as “sour grapes.”
The three technology heavyweights are among the members of a coalition called the Open Book Alliance which expressed concern about “serious legal, competitive and policy issues” surrounding Google’s book scanning project.
In a statement, the alliance said its members, which include the San Francisco-based non-profit the Internet Archive, publishers and library associations, will counter the Google book settlement “in its current form.”
Google reached a class action settlement in October of last year with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to a copyright infringement suit they filed against the Internet powerhouse in 2005.
Under the settlement, Google agreed to pay US$125 million to resolve outstanding claims and establish an independent “Book Rights Registry,” which will provide revenue from sales and advertising to authors and publishers who agree to digitize their books.
Alliance co-chairs Peter Brantley and Gary Reback said in a blog post on a Web site created by the coalition, openbookalliance.org, that the settlement “creates an unprecedented monopoly and price fixing cartel.”
“Just as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press more than 700 years ago ushered in a new era of knowledge sharing, the mass digitization of books promises to once again revolutionize how we read and discover books. But a digital library controlled by a single company and small group of colluding publishers would inevitably lead to higher prices and subpar service for consumers, libraries, scholars and students,” they said.
“Public interest demands that any mass book digitization and distribution effort be undertaken in the open, grounded in sound public policy and mindful of the need to promote long-term benefits for consumers rather than those of a few commercial interests,” they said.
Brantley is a director of the Internet Archive, which maintains a digital library of Web sites and has its own book scanning project, while Rebak is an anti-trust lawyer in Silicon Valley who ironically helped persuade the Justice Department to file its anti-trust case against Microsoft in the 1990s.
Google, whose book project is already facing anti-trust scrutiny from the US Justice Department, a court review and privacy concerns, dismissed the move by the coalition.
“This sounds like the Sour Grapes Alliance,” it said in a statement. “The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it’s understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition.”
Other members of the alliance include the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, the New York Library Association, Small Press Distribution and the Special Libraries Association.
The settlement still needs the approval of a US District Court judge, who is to hold a “fairness hearing” on the deal in New York on Oct. 7.
Meanwhile, Google announced it was making more than 1 million public domain books available for free in ePub format, an open industry standard for electronic books, in addition to the current PDF versions.
“We founded Google Books on the premise that anyone, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture,” Google said in a blog post.
“This feature takes us one step closer towards realizing that goal by helping support open standards that enable people to access these books in more places, on more devices and through more applications,” it said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS