Microsoft and Amazon fight Google Books Deal

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In October of 2008, however, Google agreed to allow libraries free and unfettered access to the entire contents of the books, while universities and other large organizations could get access by paying a subscription fee. Google also turned itself into a bookseller by allowing individual users to pay a fee to get online access to individual books that are no longer in print. That's right: revenue for the books would go to the rights owners for books that they're not even printing anymore. Seems like a win-win, right? Not everyone agrees.

A collection of authors and copyright holders objected to the settlement and requested more time to review it, while a number of academics expressed significant reservations about the deal. These concerns largely revolved around the fact that significant rights appeared to be transferred to Google and that Google could control the sale and distribution of out-of-print works, even if the author had decided to release it under a more liberal license. This all led the DoJ to get involved in an investigation of its own.

The Open Book Alliance, led by the Internet Archive and antitrust attorney Gary L. Reback, hopes to sway the DoJ's decision by explaining the significance of such a deal. "This deal has enormous, far-reaching anticompetitive consequences that people are just beginning to wake up to," Reback told The New York Times.

Aside from Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo, Internet Archive founder Peter Brantley told The Wall Street Journal that the Special Libraries Association, the New York Library Association and the American Society of Journalists and Authors are all planning to join the Open Book Alliance. Other members of the group have yet to be disclosed, but Brantley said that the information will be made public within weeks.

Proponents of the Google Books settlement still argue that the deal should be approved because it will give the world access to books that are otherwise difficult to find. Even some critics admit that the settlement, while flawed, is essential for maintaining the public's access to knowledge. "[T]he settlement provides a means whereby those lost books of the last century can be brought back to life and made searchable, discoverable, and citable," Oxford University Press USA head Tim Barton said in June. "That aim aligns seamlessly with the aims of a university press."

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