Google defended its pending settlement with authors and book publishers on Thursday during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. The search giant said the deal is important to American culture and literary history for people to be able to find and read copyrighted books that are out of print, and for rights holders to be able to market and sell them.
Google also said the settlement, which must be approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, would not have a negative impact on the $25 billion retail book market because most of the titles the agreement covers are no longer in publication and generate low commercial demand.
“It’s the newest titles and books yet to be written that will drive competition and commerce for digital books, not out-of-print books held in libraries,” explained Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond. “So don’t let anyone fool you that the future of books depends on what happens with the settlement of a lawsuit over out-of-print library books.”
Public-Domain Claims
Of the 10 million books that Google has scanned to date, the search giant estimates that at least two million are clearly in the public domain and not part of the lawsuit. That is equivalent to less than three percent of the commercial book market.
“These include books published before 1923. For these books, when a user enters a relevant query, we display the entire text,” Drummond said. “Users can freely download the book in multiple formats.”
Drummond said making public-domain texts discoverable online is already advancing education and scholarly pursuits. However, as anyone who has used Google Books to search for works published before 1923 can testify, Drummond is clearly overstating what the online service actually delivers.
Though some of the titles published before 1923 are indeed provided for download, the…