Google to sell e-books, EU investigates books.google.com

Googles’ controversial digital library books.google.com has endured much criticism in the United States, which has led to a lawsuit by the US Authors\' Guild and the Association of American Publishers (which has now been settled). Now the European Commission has decided to analyse whether the service is compatible with EU copyright law, which the Commission highly doubts. According to several Member States and the Commission, Google is breaching the law and is gaining an unfair advantage over other digital libraries, such as the EUs’ Europeana project.

Google claims that all books have either been licensed, are devoid of copyright or are orphan works, of which the writers cannot be traced. The fear is that the 600,000 works Google has classed as ‘orphan works’, are in fact not and most works will be claimed by their rights holders. So far rights holders have claimed 26,000 of these works and it is expected to rise significantly in the coming months. Google is, however, prepared to engage in constructive dialogue about the future of copyright. It is they’re aim to preserve cultural heritage and they believe in open access to information online. Google as already announced a new service, by which the company will sell e-books, which will be readable on all devices that are connected to the internet. Authors and publishers have welcomed this move, because the only service selling e-books effectively was Amazon, which doesn’t offer flexible pricing and restricts its’ e-books to a few devices.

The Commission has announced that they wish to make European copyright laws, which cover physical copies of works sufficiently, to also be compatible with communication tools of the future (such as the internet). It is not their aim to close books.google.com.