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...Last year, they came to a settlement, which is now awaiting approval from a New York district court. Presently, Google Books gives readers full access to books that are out of copyright - therefore, in the public domain - but shows only extracts of books that are still in copyright, alongside information on bookstores and libraries where you can find them. Should the court approve the agreement, Google will be able to offer users the option to purchase full digital access to books that are still in copyright but are out of print - turning itself, in effect, into a huge bookstore...
...While critics worry that the settlement would legalize a digital "land grab" of historic proportions, Google insists that it simply wants to "help readers get access to more books in more ways," a Google spokesman says. "Our goal remains bringing millions of the world's difficult-to-find, out-of-print books back to life." Read: "Librarians Fighting Google's Book Deal...
...meantime, the European Union has started hearings of its own to look into the digital future of the book. Just before they started in Brussels on Monday, Google suddenly made some conciliatory gestures towards its European critics. "Books that are commercially available in Europe will be treated as commercially available under the Settlement," the Internet giant said in letters sent to various European publishers' associations. In other words: If a book is out of print in the U.S., but still for sale in Europe, Google would not consider it out of print, and therefore cannot sell it digitally in America...
...compromise." At the E.U. hearings in Brussels, the representatives of publishing groups and governments from Italy, Spain and France have been expressing similar fears. According to the International Herald Tribune, a spokesman for the French Ministry of Culture repeated France's long-held stance that Google's book project was a risk to cultural diversity, speculating that Google might withhold access to what is essentially "cultural data" best stored locally or nationally...
...Europe's rage is tinged with a touch of shame, as the Google Books saga highlights just how far behind European nations lag in their own digitization efforts. When Google started the project five years ago, several countries - France in particular - raised the alarm and proposed grand plans to scan Europe's literary bounty. Still, "only some 1% of the books in Europe's national libraries have been digitized so far," Viviane Reding, E.U. Commissioner for Information Society and Media, noted in a joint statement, warning that "if we are too slow to go digital, Europe's culture could suffer...