U.S. Asks Judge to Make Revisions in Google Books Settlement

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Justice Department urged a federal judge in New York to alter an agreement between Google Inc. and copyright owners over the creation of a digital book library.

Justice Department lawyers, calling an amended settlement an improvement over an earlier deal, said it still “suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement.”

The agreement “still confers significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on Google,” the department said in a press release yesterday.

The department repeated its view that the electronic distribution of books “holds vast promise” of “breathing new life into millions of works that are now effectively dormant.” Justice Department lawyers made their comments in a filing late yesterday with U.S. District Judge Denny Chin.

The settlement between Google, the Authors Guild, and other authors and publishers would resolve a 2005 lawsuit that claimed Google infringed copyrights by making digital copies of books without permission. Chin has scheduled a Feb. 18 hearing to determine whether he will grant the settlement final approval.

The settlement is the second attempt by stakeholders to end the class-action lawsuit. The parties returned to the negotiating table after the Justice Department, Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and others objected to an earlier deal, saying it could give Google a monopoly in digital books.

Those companies since have raised objections to the new agreement, saying it hasn’t addressed their original concerns.


‘Unlocking Access’


Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker, in a written statement, said the Justice filing recognizes progress the parties have made and “reinforces the value the agreement can provide in unlocking access to millions of books in the U.S.”

Mountain View, California-based Google last year agreed to pay $125 million to settle the copyright claims and set up a book rights registry to identify and compensate rights holders whose books are copied by Google.

The settlement would give Google immunity from copyright laws to distribute millions of books on the Internet in exchange for sharing revenue it generates from the project.

In its filing, the Justice Department said the settlement inappropriately attempts to “implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court.”

The agreement, as a result, “purports to grant legal rights that are difficult to square” with existing copyright law.

“Google would remain the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats,” Justice Department lawyers said.

Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer who represents Microsoft and others in the Open Book Alliance, a coalition opposed to the settlement, said objections to the latest deal bordered on “outright humiliation” for Google.

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