Internet search leader Google Inc. said Monday it is making concessions to publishers outside the U.S. to try and soothe worries over its Google Books project, which aims to put many hard-to-find books online.
Google plans to sell to U.S. customers digital versions of out-of-print books that are still in U.S. copyright as part of its Google Books digital library project. Under a settlement with U.S. authors and publishers, this will cover all books unless the copyright holders object.
That agreement doesn’t cover copyright outside the United States, but it does affect foreign authors who sell books there.
Google says it will try to address concerns by adding two representatives of foreign authors and publishers to the board of the Books Rights Registry — the nonprofit organization set up by the settlement to manage U.S. copyrights.
It also says books that are out of print in the U.S. but still commercially available elsewhere would not be displayed on Google Books without explicit consent. This aims to soothe European publishers’ fears that they could not prevent the sale or display of U.S. translations of works still sold in the original language in Europe.
The company announced these plans as a European Commission hearing in Brussels listened to advocates and critics of Google Books on how the U.S. settlement would affect Europeans.
A wide coalition of Google’s Internet rivals — Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon — European publishers, libraries and copyright holders claimed that Google’s U.S. settlement would lead to a de facto monopoly for digital access to works because the project is already so far ahead of competitors.
The German government has also criticized the deal, saying it would violate German law if it operated there because it goes beyond German restrictions on how much “fair use” content can be used or published without infringing copyright.
Google Books lawyer Daphne…