Ottawa copyright lawyer David Fewer finds search giant Google¹s ambition to build digital libraries seriously flawed.
CAUT has filed a
brief with the U.S. District Court in New York, raising several objections to a settlement reached late last year in the long-running Google Books lawsuit.
The court action taken against Google in 2005 by plaintiff groups of U.S. authors and publishers claimed Google’s efforts to create a collection of digital books violated copyright.
The settlement now on the table envisages a $125 million payment plus a share of future royalties to authors, publishers and their lawyers in exchange for Google’s right to digitize a vast array of works and make them commercially available.
“There’s just so much wrong with the deal, it’s hard to know where to start,” says David Fewer, an intellectual property and technology lawyer and director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa.
Fewer, who worked closely with CAUT in drafting its objection, says the proposed settlement, among other things, contravenes international copyright law and international trade agreements, interferes with the moral rights of Canadian authors, fails to reflect the open communication values of academic authors and undermines privacy.
Concerns about the settlement agreement are widespread.
Pamela Samuelson, director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, has come out against the agreement, pointing out in a letter of objection with 150 co-signatories that the litigants “have interests and preferences that dramatically diverge from those of many rights holders who were not at the negotiating table, including academic authors.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has intervened, citing a host of concerns it has with the document and objections have also been filed by consumer protection groups, international publishers, U.S. and international author groups, literary agents, individual authors, the governments of France and Germany, several U.S. states and library associations.
A fairness hearing by the judge overseeing the case to determine which elements of the settlement will be approved is set for Feb. 18.