Mountain View, California-based Internet search giant Google has been conducting one of the largest ever public  notice campaigns in order to inform copyright holders worldwide of policies surrounding its ambitious book scanning program called Google Book Search. Google has earmarked some $7 million to place legal notices in newspapers and periodicals in every country where it can legally do so, as part of a $125 million legal settlement it reached with authors and major publishers last October. Google Book Search U.S. Federal Court Case Begins June 11 That settlement included the formation of a unique book rights holder registry in the United States and money to compensate some authors whose works have been digitized by Google without their consent. The class action settlement, which still requires the approval of a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York judge in a case slated to begin June 11, would create new revenue sharing opportunities for authors and copyright holders and significantly expand the amount of preview book text available to U.S. users of the popular Google Book Search program. Google Book Search was launched in 2004 as one of the major ambitions stemming from the fundamental goals of company co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who envisioned making it easier for people to search for information contained within the world's books through a Web-based user interface. In one of the widest-reaching legal-notice campaigns in history, Google has placed more than 200 print notices in over 70 languages as part of its push to reach copyright holders and their descendants, and has used both direct mail and a large online initiative featuring a dedicated Web site available in 36 languages to help fulfill its legal obligation to notify authors. Google Conducting Wide-Reaching Legal Notice Effort The agreement reached in October 2008 by Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild "on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide," ended two years of heated negotiations surrounding a  pair of legal suits brought against Google in 2005. The first was a class-action suit brought by the Authors Guild and book authors, followed soon after by a separate lawsuit filed by publishers McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons each as representatives of AAP. The legal suits arose from opposition to Google's efforts to scan and display short snippets of in-copyright books without the explicit permission of the copyright owner. If the settlement is approved, users of Google's leading search engine, which presently incorporates some results from Google Book Search, will have access to much more than a snippet preview of millions of books, and may find the scanned version sold by Google their only way to acquire otherwise difficult to find out-of-print books. Under the settlement, $34.5 million was to be used for the establishment of the Book Rights Registry according to court files, a program that would seek out copyright holders and represent them, according to Google chief legal officer David Drummond. The Google-run registry would also "be responsible for distributing the money Google collects to authors and publishers," which Drummond said would create "a strong incentive for rightsholders to come forward and claim their works." Traditional Media To Find Book Authors And Other Copyright Holders Google has allotted about 30 percent of its legal notice print campaign budget to notices in industrialized nations and a similar percentage to U.S. sources, with the remainder going to notifications published in sources in the remainder of the world's countries, according to a recent report by Noam Cohen in the New York Times. The traditional media legal notice push by Google has been pursued to find and reach copyright holders who either do not have or choose not to use Internet resources, and has included a wide variety of magazines, journals and newspapers. The advertising campaign is being directed by Kinsella Media in Washington, which has utilized United Nations resources to help target Google's efforts. In October 2008 Google said the "groundbreaking" agreement would, if approved, benefit readers and researchers with expanded "online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials," although the new access stemming from the settlement would not affect those outside the U.S. Google In Global Push To Notify Copyright Holders For Book Search Program Many of the 7 million or so books that Google has scanned to date through agreements with libraries and other archives are out of print yet still covered under U.S. copyright laws. When Google is unable to find the copyright holder and get permission to display such books online in their entirety, Google Book Search instead shows a short three or four line snippet taken from one page of the book. Under the agreement announced last October that short snippet would be replaced with up to 20 percent of the book in such cases, allowing researchers a more thorough preview and a way to purchase access to the entire scanned book online. "Holders worldwide of U.S. copyrights can register their works with the Book Rights Registry and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized," Google has said. Revenue from books sold through the new registry effort and the advertising that is shown alongside preview versions would be split, with Google receiving 37 percent and the rest going to the separate and not-for-profit Book Rights Registry, Google said. Related Links:
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