European laws present challenges for Google Books

From CNET News.com: -As Google closes in on a November 9 deadline to submit a revised settlement in the Google Books case, it continues to pull out all the stops to reassure the world it has the best of intentions.

The controversy over Google's settlement with groups representing book authors and publishers rages on, almost a year after it was first reached. After Google was sued in 2005 for digitizing books without explicit permission, it reached a proposed settlement in October 2008 that would give it unique rights to scan out-of-print yet copyright-protected books, exciting some librarians but raising the ire of many within the publishing and literary communities.

Nevertheless, Google has made painstaking attempts to engage with its enemies in the publishing world. Dan Clancy, engineering director for Google Books, has traveled the country meeting with opponents and supporters, patiently explaining Google's position and preaching the value of a publicly available archive of digital books.

On Thursday, Google hosted a group of four librarians from Europe, where Google has signed partnership agreements with five libraries to discuss the benefits of the project. The settlement is obviously a U.S. matter, but the contentious issues in the settlement do not exactly apply to Europe, because Google says it has not scanned out-of-print but copyright-protected books published in Europe.

Therefore, in Europe Google has only scanned public domain works held by its library partners and books for which it has negotiated scanning rights with rights holders. Still, the settlement process is being watched closely by European authors who have had books published in the U.S., as well as European librarians who are a little jealous over the resources their American counterparts could enjoy under the settlement.

"It's like everyone in the U.S. gets to use cell phones and I'm stuck with a landline," said Sarah Thomas, Bodley's librarian and director of Oxford University's Library Service. "It's a tremendous barrier to advancing knowledge."

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