Library Groups Advise Justice Department on Google Books Settlement

The American Library Association, ALA’s Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries have sent a letter (PDF file) to the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division voicing their general approval of the proposed settlement of lawsuits challenging Google’s Book Search project but reiterating their concerns over access and pricing issues. The DOJ has been looking into whether the agreement violates antitrust laws.

The settlement, which was reached in October 2008, allows Google to scan copyrighted books and display up to 20% of the text to users at no charge. Google will sell online access to individual books, and libraries, universities, and other institutions can purchase online subscriptions to large collections. The firm will keep 37% of the revenue, with the remainder going to copyright holders through a Book Rights Registry.

In the July 29 letter to Deputy Assistant Attorney General William Cavanaugh—a follow-up to a May 27 meeting with DOJ staff—the groups pointed out that since no other entity is likely to create a digital library that can compete with the one enabled by the settlement, the absence of competition “could compromise fundamental library values such as equity of access to information, patron privacy, and intellectual freedom.”

The groups called on the Antitrust Division to not only urge the federal court overseeing the settlement to supervise it closely, as they suggested in the meeting, but to “take a proactive role in the implementation of the settlement.” They urged the division to treat the settlements “as a consent decree to an antitrust action it brought. It should monitor the parties’ compliance with the settlement’s provisions as it would monitor the conduct of parties under an antitrust consent decree, and it should request the court to take action when it concludes that the parties have not met their obligations under the settlement.”

In particular, they said the division should ask the court to review: the pricing of institutional subscriptions to the digital library if the fees fail to meet the economic objectives set forth in the settlement; any refusal by the Book Rights Registry to license copyrights on books on the same terms available to Google; and the procedure by which the registry selects members of its board of directors and whether it considers the interest of all rights holders in its decision making.

Noting that “the likely demand among academic libraries for an institutional subscription is high” and that libraries will therefore be among Google’s primary fee-paying users, the letter called on the division to “pay special attention to the perspectives of libraries on the approval and implementation of the settlement.”

—Gordon Flagg, American Libraries Online
Posted on August 5, 2009.

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