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

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: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?