DOJ Turns Up the Heat On Google's Book Deal

narramissic writes "It appears that after its initial review of a deal that would settle a lawsuit publishers and authors filed against Google over the latter's book search engine, the DOJ is leaning toward challenging the proposed settlement. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported late Tuesday that the DOJ is now sending civil investigative demands (CIDs) to organizations involved in the deals, a more formal approach than its initial information-gathering efforts. But Authors Guild Executive Director Paul Aiken said the fact that the DOJ is reviewing the proposed settlement isn't surprising, considering Google is involved: 'Any big deal that involves Google is going to get a look from the Justice Department.'"

Comments

Look

[Idiot with a gun]

I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly, which isn't illegal, but it does draw attention. But the reason they're a monopoly is because they're very, very good. They really have been churning out wonderful products at a continuous rate, that's why everyone works with google. What is annoying when the DOJ turns a blind eye as other monopolies, at least from my perspective, abuse their power to maintain their position as monopolies.

Re:Look

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Regardless of Google's supposed faults/shortcomings/evilness, the real problem lies with the book industry as a whole. They have witnessed what has happened to the media industries and they're trying their hardest to hold off progress and not get into the same mess. We should have had great ebook readers for a long long time now, as well as all manners of easing ways to read, the technology is there, but the book industry is clutching to their old dead tree business model like a rabid dog on a child's arm. They're way worse than the **AAs, and the more technology encroaches on their monopoly, the nastier they'll turn.

What this is is a virtual monopoly (Google) trying to phagocyte another (publishers), and I suspect the real losers in the end, just like movies and music, will be the consumers.

Re:Look

[sy5t3m]

Wrong. This is not being looked at because google are a brilliant company who love everybody, this is being looked at because the deal is f'king shady.

The authors guild wants to sell monopoly rights to google. Rights which are not theirs to sell, if they even exist at all.
The exclusive right to scan and sell any orphaned book, which might very well contradict copyright laws.
The exclusive right to decide what constitutes an "out of print" work, and republish it.
There are others, those are just the two I can recall off the top of my head.

Google would be released from the legal obligation to seek permission of copyright holders first, whether the holders are members of the authors guild or not. As you can probably imagine, there's no way in hell the authors guild has the legal capacity to grant that permission for all authors (including foreign authors).

So google and the authors guild are trying to create an illegal monopoly.

Re:Look

[Hurricane78]

Or in other words, the authors guild is doing what they prosecute others for: Infringing the copyright of others. By acting as if they could make contracts in my place, for my books, without even asking me, and without having any rights from or relations to me.*

One should hang them with their own weapons. ^^

___
* I am not a book author (yet?). This is an example.

Google is NOT a monopoly

[Disstress]

The idea of google as a monopoly is silly. You still have ask, bing, yahoo, and even altavista is still around. There is not one product that google provides that is monopolistic in nature. Being a leader in your field does not mean that you are a monopoly. Look back at Ma Bell's past, that was a monopoly, people had no choice. People have a choice not to use google and are by no means forced to do so out of lack of options or availability.

Re:Google is NOT a monopoly

[timmarhy]

it's only a monopoly if google somehow prevented you searching else where, or stopped anyone else starting a search engine business.

as you said, yahoo and MS have significant slices of the search pie. google is just better at it, and it sickens me that a company which is actually good at it's business is being targeted by the government purely for being.. the best.

Re:Google is NOT a monopoly

[Hurricane78]

Again. You are completely off the point.

Think of it like this: You wrote a book. And Google scanned it. Now you could sue them, but you think, well, it might be something good. So you try to call up Google, and tell them, that although they should have asked you first, you can make a deal of which both of you profit.
But Google ignores you, and tells you that the Authors Guild already handles it all.
Now you are stumped, because you never made any deal with that guild, to represent you. So how can they make a contract in your name. Deciding the price and terms for you?
Well, if you ask them, they will tell you some bullshit about them OWNING IT AAAALLLL MUHAHAHA!!!1!1one
And you're out of the game.

I don't think you think that this behavior is cool. ^^
Of both of them. Google and even more the Authors Guild.

So please inform yourself a bit, before taking sides.

Re:Google is NOT a monopoly

[Late Adopter]

It's a little more complicated than either you or GP make it out to be.

Google decided to go ahead and copy all these books digitally into their archive, and the Author's Guild sued on behalf of the works to which they *do* control the copyright (or at least the right to represent the authors in legal matters). Somewhere along the line the Author's Guild asked for the lawsuit to be promoted to a class-action, which means that the outcome of the suit is binding for all possible plaintiffs (in this case, authors).

Usually class-action lawsuits are good things (especially for the lawyers who get to prosecute the case, but also marginally for the little people involved). You and I don't have the resources to take on big tobacco, for example, but once somebody does, qualified people are in on that suit by default (usually with court-mandated notice and an opportunity to opt-out). I myself made a tiny bit of money out of the Best-Buy/MSN settlement where they were signing people up and charging them for Internet service without telling them.

So in this case the Author's Guild was granted by the court the right to represent all authors in this matter. Then they settled with Google, and the terms of the settlement were especially wide ranging. Then the judge involved ok'ed it, again with the traditional notices and opportunity to opt out.

So that's how it happened. It's shady as hell, but it's the way class-action suits work in this country, and entirely legit. Perhaps the judge involved in the case made some errors in judgement, I'm not educated enough on the matter to say.

Finally, regarding your monopoly claims, you're right but you're entirely off-topic. You don't have to have a monopoly to engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior. Dumping, just to offer one example, is pretty much always illegal, regardless of your market-share. The FTC has a bunch more information on their site. The DoJ is not necessarily off the mark looking into this case (they haven't even decided they have the grounds to file a suit yet, so any rush to judgement would be premature).

Re:Old dilema

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Book search engines aren't the problem. The problem is, book search engines require books to be digitized, and from there it's only a short hop to selling digital books, something publishers really REALLY don't want. They definitely don't want books to be on the same road as MP3s, because the digitized music cat has slipped out of the record companies' bag and it hasn't been a good thing for them.

And no, I think you're wrong, a great many people would stop buying real books (or newspapers or magazines) in favor of electronic books, given the choice. What's killing the ebook market is the lack of choice: I you're into Gutemberg project-like books that are in the public domain, then you're fine, but virtually no new books are release in digital format. I for one read a lot of SF, and if I could get, say, the latest Iain M. Banks on file, I would buy it in an instant. However, I can't, so I have to order the damn hardcover from the UK, wait a million years for it to be delivered, instead of getting my fix in 2 minutes, for a premium that I'd be willing to pay, to read on an ebook reader that I'd be willing to pay dearly too - if I had a great choice of books to read on it.

Re:Old dilema

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Yes, trouble is:

1 - I don't want to spend ages rooting out an ebook torrent from shady sites. I want a well-stocked digital library that I can browse and download books from easily.

2 - I want to pay for books from living authors. I want the authors I like to profit from their work, so they keeps on writing for me. What a concept eh?

Google is NOT an a monopoly.

[RudeIota]

I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly

Monopoly? What the hell are you talking about?

Google is an advertiser.. Just like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of other companies on the Interweb and in real life. Google surely has a tremendous market share, but they don't prevent anyone from advertising with other companies... And these other companies get a LOT of advertising despite Google's presence. Hell, Yahoo! is still worth billions of dollars, and their products don't have nearly the crazy media glitz that Google seems to get. Lots of people still advertise with other companies like Yahoo! and Google's competition can still turn huge profits. Being #1 doesn't make your a monopoly.

The same goes with their web search product: They aren't even close to being a monopoly. I have a choice to use Yahoo, or Metacrawler or Ask or some other God awful search engine. What Google IS though, is very good. Because of this, most people *choose* to use it. They have a lot of inertia because they do lots of cool, free things and capitalize upon their good will and free publicity. Google is not a monopoly. Also, their search product isn't perfect... It would take some clever work, but any individual or company that creates a search engine which can compete with the quality of Google and offer something useful and novel could very well compete with them.

If Google had an exclusive deal with major Internet browser companies and/or ISPs to block competitors in the advertising and/or search markets... Well, that would be much closer to a monopoly.

Re:Google is NOT an a monopoly.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I can understand why they're looking into Google. They're a monopoly

Monopoly? What the hell are you talking about? Google is an advertiser.. Just like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of other companies on the Interweb and in real life. Google surely has a tremendous market share, but they don't prevent anyone from advertising with other companies...

Having tremendous market share is being a monopoly, in terms of the law. Not leveraging that monopoly to harm competition means Google is obeying the law, not that they aren't a monopoly. A monopoly is just having the power to abuse a position, which is legal. Abuse of a monopoly is illegal.

Being #1 doesn't make your[sic] a monopoly.

No but having 70%+ of a market does give you a lot of power over your customers. Refusing to do business with them unless they accede to your demands allows you to undermine free trade and because you have so much power your customers have little choice. Walking away from advertising with Google will kill many small companies.

Of course all of this is academic because none of Google's large market share is the monopoly (actually trust) in question in this case. It is about the formation of a new trust granting Google exclusive power to act on behalf of a trust made up by Google, the Author's Guild, and the AAP.

Re:Google is NOT an a monopoly.

[DerekLyons]

You must work in tech support - because your answer, while completely correct, has absolutely nothing to do with the situation at hand.
 
The issue isn't search, or advertising, but a dodgy attempt by Google to purchase rights from an entity whose right to sell those rights is (at best) questionable if not nonexistent. Google is trying to gain the right to scan and publish, at their choice, all books for all time - published and not yet published without being required to negotiate for those rights and without recompose to the authors.