Google’s plan to make millions of books available online has been praised for expanding access to books but has also been strongly criticised on anti-trust (competition) and copyright grounds.
Explaining some of the background to the ruling to Reuters, an American Justice Department official said the deal was amended last year in line with recommendations it made in its initial judgment.
“They made substantial progress but in our view they haven’t gone far enough,” the official told the news agency.
The department criticised the agreement for requiring authors to “opt out” of having their books digitalised. This differs from existing copyright law, where authors are usually required to approve the use of their works.
It also noted that class representatives inappropriately spoke for foreign authors with books published in the United States as well as for authors of “orphan works,” essentially copyright holders who cannot be identified or located.
Google’s exclusive access to these orphan works “remains unaddressed, producing a less than optimal result from a competition standpoint,” the department said. The pricing mechanisms also came under criticism from the department on anti-trust grounds.
American District Judge Denny Chin has scheduled a hearing on the settlement for February 18.
Google noted the praise from the department, and added in a statement: “We look forward to Judge Chin’s review of the statement of interest from the department and the comments from the many supporters who have filed submissions.”
The agreement is designed to settle a 2005 class action lawsuit filed against Google by authors and publishers who had accused the search engine giant of copyright infringement for scanning collections of books from four universities and the New York Public Library.
The Justice Department recommended in September that the agreement be rejected.
Critics of the deal include Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, the National Writers Union and Consumer Watchdog.
In mid-December, three library associations stopped short of seeking to halt to Google’s digital books plan, but asked for Justice Department oversight to ensure that institutional subscriptions were reasonably priced.