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Germany files formal opposition to Google Book Settlement
September 2, 2009 | 10:00 am
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By Paul Biba
This is from The Register. Many other countries should be thanking the Germans, for the Settlement potentially infringes on their sovereignty as well.
The German government has come out in opposition to Google’s recent book settlement, declaring it would “irrevocably alter the landscape of international copyright law.”
Court papers filed in New York yesterday said the deal “runs afoul of the applicable German national laws, as well as European public initiatives to create non-commercial worldwide digital libraries.” …
According to AFP, German justice minister Brigitte Zypries told Handelsblatt business daily that she had filed a 25-page legal brief with the court in New York that is required to give the settlement the go ahead.
“We hope that the court strikes down the approval of the settlement in the class-action suit, or at least excludes our German authors and publishers from the so-called class, so the settlement has no impact on them,” she said.
Update: The full text of the German filing is as follows. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link. You can find all the court pleadings here.
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Comments:
Actually, it is _good_ that the Google Book Settlement would alter the landscape of international copyright law!
There are some things that should be improved, especially:
- there should be a process that puts everybody into the same position as Google, so Google does not become a monopoly
- especially, there should be a central registry handling rights, objections and license fees
- there should be an international arbitration between the various national registries
But lets not forget that 98 percent of all books are permanently unavailable in any form, because they are out of print, and no current rightsholder is willing or able to bring them back to the readers. This can only happen through a radical change in copyright law, and thats why we need the Settlement.
What we see now is the result of a concerted lobbying effort of German publishers, that want to prevent out-of-print books (i.e. stuff that they do not make a penny from) from becoming digital and thus hurting their business models. Even if they are getting paid for it.
The problem is, from my perspective, that one man, unelected, and not a subject matter expert, will be making decisions that will impact the entire world. Doesn’t make much sense to me. There may not be a better way to do it, but this certainly is not even a reasonable way.
There is a better way to do it. Responsible parties including authors, publishers, and government agencies could get together and propose something that was fair and equitable to them, while giving readers and researchers a reasonable way to access these works, but that hasn’t happened yet, even with the threat of the settlement looming. And that is the crux of the problem, when the people who should be leading don’t, some other force will fill the void. That is why we have the settlement, and that is why we have book pirates on the internet, and DRM, and ebooks costing as much or more than pbooks, and all the other ills of the book industry, in my opinion.
@TheRealBillC
IMHO, it will not resolve itself through the cooperation between authors, publishers and government agencies. These represent the existing system, with powerless authors (they are always over-abundant), and publishers worried about their shrinking revenues, and government agencies imposing ridiculous copyright and DRM laws.
eBooks represent a new economical and cultural ecosystem. Dont ask the dinosaurs to design it, because they would very much prefer to keep everything as it is, only more so.
We need new creatures to populate the new sphere, and Google is currently the strongest one.
Copyrights here at anything!
Each publisher in Germany is obliged to pay to the registrar 5 euros for the book. Only then the book arrives in the uniform book register, can technically be on sale. If Google adjusts this work free of charge, many will lose the incomes. Including the corrupted German government.