The US Department of Justice has sent formal requests – civil investigative demands – to Google, and authors and publishers groups, seeking information about a deal which is expected to allow the company to make millions of books available online.
The $125m deal was struck in October 2008 between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The Justice Department is investigating whether Google has breached any anti-trust laws by signing the pact.
Google started scanning books in 2004 to make the content searchable online; the publishers and authors sued the company in 2005, alleging that it had violated copyright laws. Google settled the dispute through an agreement to pay $125m towards claims and establish a registry for publishers and authors to get paid if their titles are used online. Around April 2009, the Justice Department has commenced the investigation. Google confirmed that it had been contacted by regulators.
The Justice Department began its inquiry into the settlement after various parties complained that it would give Google a monopoly over the commercialisation of millions of orphan books – which are still protected by copyrights but are out of print and whose authors are unknown or cannot be located.
In response, Google also geared up to press its case with lawmakers and regulators.
Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive of Google, said: From my perspective, at our scale and with the impact we have, we expect to be inspected. We expect it in every government.”
Currently, users of Google Book Search are able to view only snippets of books online. Google is digitising the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Stanford and Harvard universities and is making those texts searchable online.
