Canadian authors attack the Google Book Settlement

As the Google Book Settlement heads for another crucial deadline, a group of Canadian authors is ramping up its opposition to the controversial and hugely consequential agreement. Under the terms of the settlement, authors and copyright holders have until January 28 to formally opt out of the Californian corporation’s campaign to digitize and index the collections of major libraries (including those of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Oxford universities), as part of the Google Books Library Project.

The settlement is now in its second version. The original version, reached in the fall of 2008, was revised in response to strong objections from writers’ organizations around the world, as well as from the governments of France and Germany.

The Google project has been heavily disputed since it began in 2004, with many authors and publishers accusing the corporation of serious copyright infringement. Among these are the U.S.-based Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, whose 2005 lawsuit against Google eventually resulted in the original settlement, which outlines the terms and revenue models by which Google will display and distribute the digitized books.

Yet the agreement still faces severe criticism from such organizations as the U.S.-based National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors, who claim that it is “an abuse of the law and unfair to writers,” in the words of NWU president Larry Goldbetter.

Now a Canadian petition is arguing for the outright rejection of the settlement. The list of the more than 250 names gathered so far includes Wayson Choy, Marilyn Bowering, Ann Ireland, bill bissett, Monique Proulx, Graeme Gibson, and Katherine Gordon. Organizers plan to submit the petition, which calls Google a “predatory corporation”, to the New York court scheduled to hold a February 18 hearing on the fairness of the settlement.

Google Books currently has a database of over seven million searchable books, and the company announced in October of last year that the running total of books scanned has surpassed 10 million.